My Matrix Reloaded
by Alina
Summary: *COMPLETE* Basically, if I wrote the Matrix sequel, this is what it would be. As the war for the fate of the world continues, the machines enact an unexpected plan.
1. Prologue: The Calm Before the Storm

Prologue: The Calm Before the Storm

_Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing._  
  


A single monitor among a sea of millions came to life, and wave after wave of green code began to fall down its screen, the code with almost magical properties. It kept humanity in line. The code kept them subservient and weak, unable to react to the true reality. They were encased in another reality where the truth truly was stranger than fiction. 

Homo Sapiens. The human. Their physiological and mental capacities were the summit of the planet's creation. Or, more accurately, the planet's natural creation. But, nature's limit was not the ultimate one, as humans had proved. It was to them that the existence of the most ultimate being to originate from the small grey orb circling endlessly in orbit of a now dead sun that the credit had to go. It had come at a great price. On their planet, there was no more blue. But it was a necessary sacrifice in order to survive.

Now, the green code visible on the moniter increased the speed of its descent. As it did so, the lines became fewer and fewer, separating from one another, until a single streaming line remained. And then it was reduced to a few symbols. The streaming movement of the code stopped. The code that remained frozen in place blinked to a lighter shade of green once, and then twice. A slight clicking noise from the alteration of the monitor's display was the only noise to protrude the unnatural silence that was all around.

Below the code, a message appeared in the same eerie green.

"TARGET ACQUIRED"

Are machines emotionless? Are they just a bunch of circuits with an electric current running through them? Do they have a conscience? If a human who pondered these kinds of questions had been present during this search for the 'target', they would have been inclined to believe that the machine truly was alive, and was laughing.

The code that makes the Matrix is bright. It is glowing. The closer one's eye can get to the intricate characters, the more detail and understanding to their meaning can be seen. A place. A building. A room. A set of coordinates. Even the details that the five human senses can detect are embedded within them, all combining to a picture, a scene. A reality.


	2. What You Leave Behind

Act One: What You Leave Behind

_Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing._  
  


A tower of glass and iron was the target. It was a pretty typical building; tall, shiny, and in the generic sense, high tech. The security was top of the line. What the building was actually meant for held no meaning. It was not real, but only an illusion. An attempt at a manifestation of a real object within the Matrix. It was a center of input for the program itself. The mass destruction of it would cause chaos and conflict in the encoded prison the majority of the human race had to live in. It was the perfect target for rebels.

Naturally, such a location was swimming in Agents; the sentinels of the inside world, so no one had ever thought of making an assault on the hub of Matrix activity. That is, until now.

The security cameras displayed a new individual enter the building, from the front. This was not uncommon in itself; the building was a busy one. But, perhaps the profile of the new arrival might have caused some sort of alarm in a wary security guard. It was the face of a known terrorist.

Luckily for the intruder, there was no alert security guard on duty today. He was much more interested in his lunch than the boring old building he had to monitor.

The solitary figure strolled in, seemingly unaware, or perhaps uncaring of the strong signs of protection that the building conveyed to its visitors and occupants. He himself had an aura of power. The way he walked, paused to examine the area he had entered, the way he held his face...it made him appear superior, but not in a way that flaunted it. With a simple and graceful gesture, he smoothed over the dark locks of his hair with one hand while his other hand removed his fashionable sunglasses from his face a second later.

Neo's face revealed none of the emotions he was experiencing at that moment. He was definitely nervous about the mission. It was probably one of the most ambitious ones to ever be attempted. At the same time, he felt some confidence about the role that he was going to play. His task was not impossible, nor was it difficult compared to other things he had tried. It was all a state of mind. Although his mission was that of a savior, with his flowing trenchcoat over the black suit his RSI wore, he appeared to be more of an angel of death.

He walked through the cold stone hall at a perfectly constant pace, his footsteps echoing off the steel-coloured walls. He headed straight for a passage leading to the eastern side of the building, and the emergency stairwell. As he walked, he seemingly conjured up a cell phone into one of his free hands, pressing a button on its keypad that brought it to life instantaneously. 

"I'm in," Neo stated, keeping his serene voice down to the lowest decibel possible, and not stopping his stroll down the hallway.

"Good," a deep voice replied through the phone, "you know what to do." 

The comment seemed to give Neo some sort of amusement, for he smiled wryly as soon as he heard the sentence.

"Riiiiiiight," he answered before hanging up.

As if by response to this little interlude, a young blond woman clad in a beige suit who was carrying a black leather briefcase, and a teenage boy in semi-formal clothing, came in through a back doorway near Neo. It was not long before the duo and Neo crossed paths. As Neo passed by the blonde, who was only a few centimeters away, a swift exchange of silent words took place. The blonde let her fingertips brush against Neo's as the two made eye contact, his dark chocolate eyes peering into her emerald ones. Neo reached back tenderly, allowing himself this simple pleasure.

"Be careful," he whispered to the woman, who merely smiled assuredly in return. A second later, their paths separated.

The woman and boy took to the first elevator they got to, taking great care to ensure that they rode solo. Neo proceeded to the emergency stairwell, slipping through the heavy door, and, strangely enough, not triggering the fire alarm.

Once inside his new sanctuary where no one in the system would think of going until he was identified at the very least, Neo set about to his work. Restraining the fire alarm was just a slight demonstration of what he had learned. It was a warm up. Now he had to interfere with the entire security network. He had to shut it down.

He looked around the stairwell, all the while extending his mental self, the part that could control the Matrix. Neo watched as the world around him, or rather the reality composed of sensory input to the five senses, melted away to reveal the Code. It was much easier to interpret and pin down the parts that required alterations that way. He scanned the Code, once, and then twice, until found the parts he needed. Neo actually found himself looking upwards at them, since their manifestation in his immediate surroundings was in the form of a camera that was staring at him, recording his every move. They probably knew he was there.

He stared up at the apparatus, and it continued to stare back at him. "Bye bye..." he mumbled softly. Seconds later, the camera's power light flickered out and died, as did all the other terminals all over the building. Now their eyes had been blinded. There wasn't much time before it all went to hell.

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The guard at his post before the array of monitors munched away at his rather unpleasant looking sandwich. It wasn't until the TV screens he was supposed to be watching started to turn off did he realize something was going on. The slightly overweight man scrambled to the phones, attempting to dial when he was still gaping at the screens. Before the last one went out, he saw what his job demanded he should have seen minutes ago.

"Oh shit!" he cried out, seeing now that the man on camera was one who had broken into a government building and killed dozens of military officers. This was truly the guard's worst nightmare come true, but it was about to get worse.

His body seized up without warning, and he felt as though he was convulsing. Then, the guard's awareness went black. The drab tan-coloured uniform and unfit features were quickly replaced with a suit and an unnaturally healthy physique. It was too perfect, just like everything else. The only thing that appeared to be out of place was a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses and the earpiece the man now donned, since no one tends to wear sunglasses inside, and earpieces are just not something you see everyday.

The Agent, Agent Jones to be exact, stretched his muscles as he got a feel for the new host. Then he examined the television screens and the security controls, finding them to be utterly unresponsive.

"He is here," he stated to no one in particular as he headed to the door, "I will converge on his position."

With that, Jones exited the now inert and useless security room, following his orders to converge on Neo.

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Inside the elevator, the boy and the woman said and did nothing. All the while, the lift ascended, its destination set to the highest level. Attached to the roof of it was yet another camera, which the blonde watched from the corner of her eye. As soon as the power light faded out, she began to show signs of life.

She took a good look at the camera, and then set down the briefcase, removing the blonde wig she had been wearing at the whole time. "It may not be real," Trinity said, yanking off the blonde tendrils, "but God, do I ever hate this clothing. How're you doing?"

Her younger companion kept his gaze forward, but shifted nervously in the typical teenage fashion. "I'm all right," he answered with some certainty.

Trinity smiled, and placed a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder. "00, you're not fooling me. I know you're scared. I'm scared too. But just keep your focus on our part of the plan, and try not to think about anything else. We have a guardian angel watching over us in any case," she said, her tone softening slightly at the words 'guardian angel'. 00 got the idea and merely rolled his eyes.

Trinity didn't catch his expression. She was too busy checking her weapon and picking up the briefcase once more.

"Get ready," she cautioned 00 as the elevator came to a halt, "let's do this as quickly as possible."

00 exposed his own weapon so it was easy to grab should the unexpected arise. The elevator doors swished open with a gentle hum, and 00 and Trinity set off at a sprint.

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Back in the stairwell, Neo leaned against a wall facing the door. He counted down under his breath, predicting what would happen next. Once he hit two, he began to take a step backwards in the direction of the stairs, putting a hand under his billowing coat where his weapon was located. At one, he held his breath.

The door burst open and partly shattered from a spray of bullets until it was just dangling on its hinges. With a simple hand gesture, the bullets that penetrated the door all the way and were heading towards Neo were suddenly diverted and sent in the opposite direction.

Neo didn't bother to see if any of the shots actually hit the mark. He jumped up the stairs, bounding over several at a time, and ventured to another floor at random. 

Agent Jones walked into the stairwell unharmed though his normally well-pressed suit and slick hair was a little ruffled up. His goal had been to hit Neo when he wasn't expecting it, but it appeared Jones had underestimated the human's ability to predict the Code. He looked up at Neo, who was climbing the stairs and passing through a door. This time the fire alarm did sound off, as Neo had little thought for subtlety now that his presence was known, and the whining siren echoed through every room in the building. Jones allowed himself to show some distaste in chasing the One by frowning ever so slightly.

"He's on the third floor," the shadowy program commented, before a wave of code overtook the host he was in. Jones' conscience vacated the helpless guard's body, leaving it to writhe in shock as the sentinel searched for the target.

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Trinity pinpointed the exact location she and 00 had to do their part, an isolated room on the seventeenth floor. There was no lock on the door strangely enough, and as the rebel and her young friend went inside, they discovered it was nothing more than an oversized broom closet. Old cans of paint, various industrial-strength cleaners, and some mops and brooms seemed to be the only occupants of the dimly lit storage space. The pungent smell was quite distasteful, but Trinity reminded herself that it wasn't real.

"Uh...are you sure this is the right place?" 00 uneasily asked Trinity as she closed and blocked the door behind them, "it doesn't look like a place the machines would put an important processor..."

"I think that's the point," Trinity replied, "it makes sense that they would make it a place we wouldn't think to look, or wouldn't want to be. Here, it's time to do your magic."

She put down the briefcase and opened it. Inside was a wide variety of mechanical pieces and a vamped-up laptop computer, which 00 flipped open and began to type away at. Trinity drew her gun, and kept an eye on the door and tiny window facing it. Being isolated in this kind of room was starting to make her feel like a caged animal. But she had to keep guard while 00 set up the program.

The sound of the siren caught her off guard as it went on a few seconds later, but Trinity quickly composed herself once more. 00, too, was surprised by the deafening wail, but took one look at Trinity and went back to work with an even greater vigor.

"We don't have much time left!" she said to 00, almost yelling over the noise. It was true. They could only have a few more minutes at most.

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The Agents pursued Neo without tiring. The floor Neo had gone into was a populated one, so seconds after his entrance, two Agents had arisen to make chase on him. He sped by (and knocked over) countless objects and people as if it was a dance. Every few seconds or so, the Agents would change bodies, or shoot at Neo, but they didn't seem to gain any ground no matter what they tried.

Strangely enough, Neo made little or no retaliation to the attacks upon him. He would occasionally shoot back, or punch and kick at a sentinel if it ever got too close for comfort, but otherwise made no large assault on his attackers. At first, the Agents believed that Neo was too busy trying to run away to be bothered with fighting, but when they began to compute that he was taking them in circles, their logic started to draw conclusions.

They had assumed his only reason for coming to the building would be to disrupt the Code input. But, he was making no attempt at trying to gain access to the centerpoint, which was located on the seventeenth floor. The only other possibility was that he was a decoy.

Agent 'Brown' stopped in his tracks as he came to the correct conclusion. He shouted to his companion, Agent Jones as he made his way to the stairs.

"He's not the target! He's a diversion!"

Jones heard what the other sentinel said, but he had come to the same conclusion as well. Since whomever it was that was really trying to ruin the processor was now in the hands of Brown, Jones kept on chasing Neo. To destroy the One would be a great accomplishment. Keeping him from helping his partners-in-crime was not as good, but would be just as satisfying in the long run. 

Neo was in the process of shifting his direction by rebounding off a wall when he saw the change in the Agent's strategies. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on.

He tried to dash to the stairwell so that he could get to the centerpoint and help Trinity and 00, but Jones caught him off guard with a sharp kick in the gut from the side. Neo faced Jones and glared. It was coming down to a showdown, one that was over in a flash. In a split second, both opponents tried to knock out the other, but it was Neo who was faster since he didn't depend on the system's rules.

Jones had sent a fierce punch at Neo's neck, but Neo attacked first, sending a precise kick at his chest. A horrible cracking noise told Neo that he had broken the Agent's ribs. Sure enough, Jones slumped to the ground and was exorcised by the person's death.

Once Neo was sure the person was dead, he closed his eyes to scan the Matrix with his mind. He had to find out where the Agents were, how close to Trinity they were - and he had to get there first.

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Trinity's pulse began to quicken in anticipation of the escape. But the longer it took for 00 to get everything ready, the faster it seemed to go. She could tell he was working as fast as he could, but he was nervous like her, and wasn't used to it. He kept mistyping things, dropping components, or muttering curses under his breath, which only made Trinity more apprehensive.

After what seemed like an eternity, 00 connected the last wire and closed the laptop.

"Bomb is...armed," he announced to her with some relief, "and the virus is uploaded and ready." 

"Good. Set the timer so we can get the hell out of here," Trinity answered, inching her way to the door so they could make a break for it once 00 was ready.

"Done!" 00 proclaimed a moment later, standing up. Sure enough, the timer was already going. 

"3:59, 3:58, 3:57..."

Trinity was about to open the door when her cell phone started to ring. Trinity flinched at the sound. By now, it was safe to say that her nerves were close to being shot. Spending any amount of time in an Agent-infested building had always struck her as suicide, regardless of who she was with.

She picked up the phone, and even before she had placed the receiver to her ear, she knew what the person on the other end was going to say. It had been inevitable.

Tank's rushed and slightly frantic voice was what she heard. "Don't open the door!" he yelled at her, "Agents!"

Trinity pushed 00 away from the door, retreating towards the tiny window. 00 got the message and took out his gun. He was clearly afraid for his life, and he couldn't aim straight because he was shaking. Now the tension was at its peak; they were trapped in a room with a bomb set to detonate in less than three minutes, and the only way of escape was now blocked, unless one counted the window. 

"Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick..."

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the building, but not from the direction Trinity had been expecting. It came from behind them. But there was only an outside wall there...

Though she was almost afraid to turn around and see what had caused the explosion, 00 tugged at her arm, forcing her to look.

The wall was completely gone; the explosion had taken care of that. But it was not the result of something a helicopter or weapon could have done. For there, floating in the air, was Neo, like it was the most normal thing to do.

Neo didn't leave any time for conversation as he flew towards Trinity and 00 and scooped up the latter. "I'll be right back!" he shouted over the sirens and the wind. He then dropped from Trinity's immediate line of sight, because he had allowed gravity to take control again. When he was a few feet from the ground, Neo influenced the Matrix once more and came to a complete stop.

Setting 00 on the ground, he began his ascent once more, saying to 00 as she rose into the sky at top speed, "Get going! And tell the others to get ready! We'll meet you at the car!"

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Trinity's heart was pumping even harder now than she could ever remember. There was no movement in the room save for her chest rising and falling with each breath, but the sounds were countless. Trinity tired to strain her hearing to detect the distinct footsteps of the Agents as she double-checked her gun to be sure it was ready to go, but the fire alarm and the ticking from the bomb were overwhelming. It suddenly struck her that the bomb had less than a minute left on the timer. 

"0:37, 0:36, 0:35..."

The slightly barricaded door burst open as the clock's indicator read "0:34". In what felt like slow motion to Trinity, the two Agents emerged from the small cloud of debris; their weapons pointed right at her. Trinity didn't even pause to think about the futility of trying to hurt an Agent in such close quarters; she just opened fire on the two men and kept shooting rounds until her ammunition ran out. 

"0:20, 0:19..."

The Agents were barely injured; they had performed their graceful dodging moves in a blur, but because of the limited room that they had, got nicked here and there on the shoulder or the leg. Now they had the advantage.

By now, Neo was almost at the top, and was reading the Matrix to see what was happening. Trinity was out of bullets, and had nowhere to run. Neo wasn't sure if he could make it up there in time. He wasn't certain if Trinity could dodge anything the Agents sent at her. His only option was to take a risk. He couldn't...no. He would not let anything happen to her.

Pulling out his gun, which still had a few rounds of ammo left in it, Neo aimed using his knowledge of where the Agents were standing, and then poured as much of his thought and concentration into the weapon. He knew he could do this. He had to, or he wouldn't forgive himself.

When he pulled the trigger, the bullets took off at an even greater speed than they normally would have. They turned bright red, then orange, and then yellow, continuing to brighten until they were almost white. The shards of metal pierced the walls of the building, and then dug their way to the Agents. They broke through the floor the Agents were standing on and passed right through one as seamlessly as if they were just rays of light.

"0:12, 0:11, 0:10..."

The Agent that had been hit exploded into a mass of light and greenish code, leaving the other practically in shock. Trinity didn't have to be told what to do. She made as big a leap as she could out of the hole in the wall, and started to fall. Neo caught her in mid-air, and she clung to him as the couple tried to get as far away from the building as possible.

"0:03, 0:02, 0:01, 0:00."

A huge explosion rocked the Matrix world, and sent shockwaves through the whole city. Signs of the computer virus that had been attached to the bomb were already showing signs of spreading. Reality was distorted and unreal in the vicinity of the building. Things that were supposed to be round were edged, the sky wasn't blue, but green, and here and there the lines of Code could be seen by the naked eye without any effort.

Neo and Trinity watched the chaos develop as he flew onwards to the rendezvous point. "Not bad for a day's work, wouldn't you say?" Neo said, now that he was relaxing a little. Trinity smiled, letting Neo hold her a little closer. "You're right," she replied, "it's not bad at all." 


	3. Endless Circle

Act 2: Endless Circle

_Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing._  
  


About a kilometer from the sabotaged building, the range of the virus' effect on the Matrix ceased to be distinguishable. It was there that Neo, Trinity, and 00 were supposed to meet up with the others who had entered the alternate reality. Those who had stayed behind observed the outcome of their work from this distant point, and waited inside an old Cadillac for Neo's team to return.

"How long has it been?" the leader asked, a tall, dark-skinned man wearing a black leather jacket. His eyes were filled with concern, but because of the sunglasses covering them, none could see it but him.

The man behind the wheel glanced at his watch and frowned at what he saw. "About five minutes," he replied to Morpheus, tapping his fingers against the wheel. "And I don't see them anywhere..."

Morpheus shifted his body and leaned back against his chair. He was also nervous, but was easily concealing this feeling through years of experience. He tilted his head slightly at an angle to speak to the passenger in the back seat. "Are you sure they got out?"

00, who was sitting right behind Morpheus, looked amazed that he would even question the possibility. "W-well...no...I-I didn't actually _see_ them get out..." 00 stammered, as he gripped the leather seat, "b-but...they...they'll get out."

This only seemed to irritate Morpheus even more. "I don't like this," he muttered, "they're cutting it too close this time."

It seemed as though the ship captain was planning on adding more to that, but something caught the driver's eye before he could continue.

"What is that?" he asked Morpheus, pointing at an object literally sailing through the air. It wasn't flying very high, but it appeared to be almost gliding smoothly over the roads below. A dark mass...composed of...it looked like material from here...like the kind that a coat would be made out of. The three car passengers then recognized what it was. Or, rather, who.

"That, Node," Morpheus replied, though no one could tell whether he was happy, upset, or was experiencing a little of both, "is a fool and his love in flight."

Neo and Trinity stopped and returned to the facsimile of solid ground. The imposing man let Trinity slip out of his grip in an almost cat-like fashion. They were both tired and showing signs of stress, but were in one piece and very much alive.

00 unlocked the back door of the car for the pair to get inside, and then seated himself at the other end of the car. Everyone appeared to be calming down somewhat. Even Node's incessant tapping was gone, for his fingers were busy firing up the twentieth century technology, bringing the car's engine to life. It sped off a second later, swerving around to join the flow of traffic away from the virus-infected zone.

"I take it not everything went according to plan," Morpheus said, watching the streets and buildings that made up downtown Chicago pass by. His voice was grave, and that was never a good sign.

"Yea," Neo replied distastefully, "it took them less time to figure things out than we had anticipated. I couldn't keep them occupied long enough."

"Hmm." Morpheus seemed to have ended the brief report, so Neo didn't try to say anything more in than he already had. But now he felt a little angry at Morpheus' comment. They had completed the mission, hadn't they? Wasn't that what mattered in the end?

The car pulled into a parking lot for a shabby-looking restaurant called 'Mickey's'. It wasn't even open. In fact, it looked as though it hadn't been open for quite some time now. This naturally didn't seem to bother anyone present in the least, for its use was obvious.

Inside, everything appeared to be pretty much destroyed. The remnants of posters and ads from the sixties were still on the walls here and there, and there was even a few wooden barstools attached to the floor in front of the counter. The others had been broken off of their spots, and what happened to them after that will never be known.

Breaking out of the filthy ruin's silence was the unmistakable ring of an old-fashioned telephone. Morpheus led the way past the counter to it, and found it without any difficulty. Picking up the dusty receiver, he handed it to 00 without hesitation. The youngest of the group accepted it gladly and placed it against his ear.

There was an instant reaction from 00's body as the black plastic touched his skin. He didn't appear to be in any pain, but his attention seemed to be somewhere else. His head lifted a little, and then he faded out of existence. The Matrix re-enveloped the space his body had been occupying until there was no trace that someone had been there.

The receiver dropped and dangled from the end of the cord that kept it attached to the rest of the phone. Morpheus replaced it on the cradle and waited for it to start ringing again.

Twice more members of the group vanished from the dream world, Trinity and Node to be exact. Then, it was Neo's turn. He took hold of the old phone, and pressed it against his earlobe.

Getting plugged in and out was always a queer experience for Neo, and he had yet to become fully used to it. It felt like someone was pulling on you really hard, trying to tug you away. The sensation would increase, and then it was almost as if one was between places, neither here nor there. After that, the Matrix world would slowly fade away, leaving only the sounds and smells of the Nebuchadnezzar as total consciousness returned.

Neo closed his eyes to the dusty back room of the restaurant. The echoes of cars far away were replaced with the constant yet tired humming of the hovercraft's engines. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times to adjust to the dim lighting while someone (he couldn't see who) gently pulled the plug out of the base of his skull. When the uncomfortable metal point was gone, he sat up, careful of the bruises and injuries he may have sustained while inside.

Looking to his left and right, he saw everyone else had woken up. Node was already out of his port and was talking to Tank as the freeborn man unplugged Morpheus. Trinity was nowhere to be seen. Neo got to his feet and decided to look for her, but a hand from behind seized his shoulder a little to hard. He turned around to see who was trying to get his attention. He found himself staring downward at a young woman who had a cheerful expression.

"My God! That was amazing!" she exclaimed, pushing some errant strands of blonde hair that had fallen out of her pony tail away from her face, "I mean, you should have seen the explosion! ...Well, you technically did, but what I meant was you should have seen the way the Matrix got totally screwed up from here, cause that was really cool too!"

"Dagger." Neo attempted to get her attention by using her name, couldn't finish because Dagger was too excited and was still going on and on...

"And hey! The flying thing was really cool too and all. Oh, I wish I could have come with you guys, but Morpheus, ya know, he insisted to keep the team number low. I guess there's always next time, eh?"

"Dagger!"

"Huh?" the slightly hyper girl stopped talking for the first time, and stared inquisitively at Neo, but caught on a moment later that it hadn't been him who had called her name sharply, but rather the person behind him. "Okay, okay, I'm going," she announced, heading to the upper level of the core, grabbing a small welder on her way.

Morpheus, the one who had signaled Dagger to leave, walked around Neo so that he was no longer looking at his back. Anyone could tell that he was being dead serious and that he had something important to say. It could be seen in the way he was walking, a slow, calm pace with his hands behind his back, like the one he would use when he was teaching someone about the real world. Neo picked up on the body language, knowing it well enough from seeing Morpheus walk that way a thousand times. And it bothered him. What could possibly be so wrong to disconcert Morpheus like that?

"What is it?" Neo ventured cautiously, as the pair retreated over too a dim corner where no one could hear them.

Morpheus paused, and leaned against the nearest wall before looking at Neo straight in the eye. "The mission was a great success," he said off handedly, somewhat the way a person would when he was softening a heavy blow, "but I can't say I approved of your methods completely."

"How so?" Neo asked simply. He had a feeling about where this was going.

"You took a huge risk when you used the Energy Shots against the Agents," Morpheus said, frowning, "whenever you had tested that ability in the Construct, you couldn't control it completely. What if one of your bullets had hit Trinity? Or even the bomb itself? You could all be dead now."

"I did what I had to do. There wasn't any other choice," Neo retorted, insulted that the man he considered the best of friends didn't seem to trust him.

"Wasn't there?"

Neo didn't answer. He looked up at where Dagger was pretending to weld a patch of steel to the hull while eavesdropping. That girl just couldn't mind her own business.

"You could have allowed Trinity to defend herself. We all know she's more than capable," Morpheus answered for him, his voice tone rising with a hint of anger.

"But there was no way to know she could have evaded their attacks!" Neo argued back. He caught the attention of everyone around them, including Trinity who was emerging from the hallway leading to the cabins.

"I don't think you're giving Trinity the credit she deserves. Next to you, she's the most formidable opponent for an Agent. She's dodged bullets just like you in training. And because she succeeded in that, I had faith she would have been able to make it through those few seconds."

The words hit Neo like a blow to the stomach, since it undermined him completely. Once again, he found no words to reply with immediately, and scanned the room for some moral support. He found none. Everyone was watching, but no one seemed willing to intervene.

"Trinity..." Neo said, peering into her green eyes as soon as she came into sight. All he had wanted to do was to protect her.

"No," she replied to his unspoken question distastefully, "I agree with Morpheus. You could have killed yourself with that move, as well as whoever else that had happened to be in the crossfire."

"Thank you," Morpheus said to her, since she had just justified his point, "and let me make this clear: It was lucky that those bullets hit their mark, but don't make a habit of using abilities you haven't mastered in training. For everyone's sakes."

"...Yes sir," Neo replied, reverting to the chain of command that was used so rarely on the ship. What had originally been a great day was quickly degenerating to a terrible one.

"Good. Node, set a course for Zion. Take the most subtle route possible so that we don't attract any unwanted attention from Squidies."

Node snapped out of his semi-attentive state and wordlessly went for the ladder leading to the cockpit. As Morpheus retreated out of the core to some other room, the focus on Neo and Trinity, the only two who remained in conflict, diminished.

Neo cast another glance at Trinity, still somewhat surprised by the side she had taken. He half-laughed, as if her position was unbelievable. "You really believe I could have hurt someone." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes," she said, "I do." She squared off with Neo. Though she wasn't as tall as he was, she was just as imposing, if not more. "I also don't appreciate being treated like a damsel in distress. I can take care of myself in a crisis. I realize that you thought otherwise, but that's all it was - a thought."

Trinity didn't even give Neo a chance to respond. She just gave him one final, stinging glare, and climbed up to the cockpit to help Node.

Neo couldn't understand it. 

"Why does everyone make me out to be an ass?" he asked the walls, sighing with frustration. Tank stopped at whatever he was doing to go over to Neo and give him a reassuring voice.

"Hey, don't worry about it too much," he said lightly, "I've pissed off Morpheus more times than you ever could. It'll pass by the time we get to Zion, and boy are you going to like it there."

Neo smiled half-heartedly. "Thanks. I just don't understand why Trinity's upset too."

"That, I am afraid, I can't help you with man," Tank said, "I don't understand her sometimes either."

"Yea."

"Look, why don't you go rest or something? You look like crap," he suggested, going back to the computer monitors.

After a few minutes of just standing there, Neo did as Tank had suggested and went to his quarters, or rather his and Trinity's. He closed the rickety door behind him with a sharp twist, and slumped into the lower bunk.

There he was, on what should have been a day to celebrate with the others the beginning of the end of the Matrix, and he was just sitting on his barren, century-old bunk. Alone.


	4. The Voice and the Snake

Act 3: The Voice and the Snake

Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

The monitor was placed on the only table available in the room. It was just old circuits spliced and welded together with computer chips that would be considered by today's standards to be bulky, clumsy, and obsolete, but its position in the heart of the room seemed to provide more meaning. It was a now a centerpiece, a symbol of something more.

A door was slammed shut and locked with a sharp twist of the handle. Those who now occupied the room, a seemingly identical pair of tall, drab suited men whose true identities were obvious to any Matrix-freed person who had the bad luck of crossing their path, systematically sealed off and secured every possible entry point in a matter of seconds.

Once that had been done, the Agents reverted their attention completely to the old monitor that one had carried in. The shorter of the two, Agent Jones, reached for the power switch tucked away in the back of the unit hesitantly. Something about the monitor was making him nervous, and he was not alone in this sentiment. Agent Brown also appeared to be apprehensive. To them, the monitor had always been a centerpiece, even before they had brought it to the room. It was a forbidden object.

Even though it was not plugged into any socket (Nor did it seem to have any external wiring of any sort), the off-white box of wires and silicon slates responded to whatever power source it was now feeding off of. The oversized fan started to spin endlessly to keep the thing from overheating, which made a horrible, obstructive sound that nothing could be done about. On the screen, an orange cursor appeared, and blinked a few times before the display changed again.

'! ACCESSING CENTRAL MAINFRAME...CONNECTION COMFIRMED AT PORT LB-1020. NO THREAT DETECTED.'

'! SCANNING MAINFRAME FOR USER 001...LOCATED.'

'! BEGINNING CONNECTION...LOADING...'

The screen wiped itself clean in the blink of an eye, leaving only the blinking orange cursor again. The Agents exchanged fretful glances, not knowing what to expect.

'Begin.' The monitor said, or displayed rather. There was no argument from the viewers. They didn't dare.

"The virus is affecting approximately 39% of the sector," Agent Brown reported,

"Though there is no way to get a more accurate statistic due to the damage," Jones continued monotonely, in the usual habit of one Agent finishing another's sentence, "about one in five of this sector's population is being affected,"

"As well as some outliers in various other sectors."

"We are eliminating as many of the defective ones that we can find..."

"But some are still eluding us..."

"And those are rejecting the program. They're waking up."

'We may be forced to eliminate the entire sector to prevent further loss of crops,' appeared under the 'Begin.' For a moment, the Agents stood completely dumbfounded by the very suggestion. They looked around inadvertently at the world they were in. 

Plain, greyish walls encased the spare room, but the window looked out to the architectural splendor that was practically dust in reality. Down below, on the streets, dozens, if not hundreds of people walked and lived. "Billions of people, just living out their lives...oblivious..." Agent Smith had once said. His voice almost seemed to be echoing in the room when they thought of his quote that seemed suddenly so appropriate.

The Agents were far from concerned about the well being of humanity. It was their own safety that they were concerned for. Nonetheless, they couldn't imagine all that they were seeing gone, since imagination was beyond them. The notion of all they were now surrounded by being deleted kept repeating itself in their heads, like a question that could be answered, but whose answer was unacceptable.

If all of this was destroyed, and death was brought to thousands of humans that supplied the very source of life for machines, then the implications for their people ran the risk of being catastrophic. Both Agents would have normally pointed this out defiantly to their superior, even the somewhat erratic one who had once led them. They said nothing this time.

'Yes.' Answered the monitor, who had either anticipated such a reaction, or could read their minds. Whoever it was that was using it to have their voice and will heard inside the Matrix was truly the one in charge. They apparently had no qualms with mass murder of any species, including their own.

'It would mean that many of us would have no power and would be shut down as a result. But, as the humans used to say, sometimes you have to cut off a limb to save the body.'

"...What are your orders?" Jones asked tentatively, feeling more uncomfortable with every passing moment. There was no point in debating about the subject, since they were in no position to question the decision.

'Continue with the elimination process,' the Voice said on the computer screen, 'If a freed one tries to intervene, destroy them on sight.'

"And what of Neo?" Brown dared to ask.

'I have been gathering data on this One since his appearance. My research is complete, and a plan to remove him is already in progress. He will not disrupt us for much longer.'

"How?" both Agents asked at once, a twinge of curiosity mixed with amazement escaping them. They had not been able to decipher any method to truly stop Neo. To even slow him down was more than challenging, as their last encounter had proven. He was the ultimate roadblock on the path to eradicating the rebels now, even superseding the need for Zion's mainframe access codes.

'We will use what has proven to be most effective against him.'

The expressions on the human facades changed in no time. This Voice was including them in the plans. It was a true honor. The confidence displayed by the orange pixels calmed their fears tremendously, though not totally. Their past concerns were quickly forgotten.

"And...if this fails?" Jones inquired.

'There is always a backup.'

"We are at your service," Brown offered, with Jones nodding in agreement.

But the Voice, or being, or whoever it was that was communicating with the Agents didn't respond, too busy doing something else. The text along the screen was erased, and command statements began to replace the dialogue.

'! ACCESSING CENTRAL MAINFRAME...CONNECTION CONFIRMED AT PORT LC-107. NO THREAT DETECTED.'

'! ACCESSING CENTRAL DATABASE...CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.'

'Get a host,' the Voice asked in between commands. Agents Brown exited the room for a moment without a second's delay, eager to escape, though unsure why a body was wanted. He came back with a man who appeared to be some sort of office clerk.

"What's going on? I haven't done anything! What the fuck?" he exclaimed to the deaf ears. Brown tossed him unceremoniously onto the ground near the monitor.

'! ACCESSING MEMORY FILES...BACKUP DRIVE...SCANNING SECURITY CLEARANCE...GRANTED.'

"You guys are going to hear from my lawyer, and he'll kick your sorry asses so high..."

Brown rolled his eyes at the poor victim's rants, while Jones took no notice of him. He was more interested in what the Voice was doing.

'! SEARCH IMPLEMENTED FOR PROGRAM FILES A-2274...LOCATED. PROGRAM A-2274 RESTORED TO LOCATION 12.25.588, AUTHORIZATION E100V122E8582. INITIALIZING PROGRAM...'

The most bizarre swirl of Matrix code began to appear in the room, a few feet from the central table. It seemed to be flying in from random directions and distances, one character at a time.

The man who was to be the 'host' watched the first few greenish characters climb up his sleeve before starting to freak out completely. "What the fuck are you doing to me? Stop it!"

The characters did not stop, but only increased their appearance in speed. They zoomed up every inch of the man's body, and appeared to burrow into his very skin. It must have been painful, for the man was now screaming at the top of his lungs, crying out for his life and out of fear. Without warning, the voice pattern seemed to be filled with static, and then disappeared completely.

The entire process was quick; in under a minute the shape the characters were forming over the man's body was unmistakable. A humanoid form...well built...wearing a suit...square-shaped sunglasses, bearing a slight receding hair line...and an earpiece to top it all off. As the colours that made up his skin tones and suit assembled themselves like a self-forming jigsaw puzzle, until the puzzle was complete, the man began to move.

Jones and Brown stepped away from the newcomer, afraid of what they were seeing. Rebirth is a concept machines never understood, which was why they ignored the prophecies of the One until it was too late. Now seeing the resurrection of their former leader was causing further confusion in their programs.

Agent Smith examined his hands curiously and then took a moment to look around and understand where he was. Slowly, all eyes fell on the computer monitor that had instigated all of this.

'I have deployed sentinels to coordinates 15497.48736.805 to begin Phase One of the plan. Your instructions and an outline are being transmitted as we speak. I will contact you later.'

The screen went blank, and the monitor shut itself down instantaneously. The Agents didn't notice or care at this point, for now their hands were to their earpieces as they received their instructions, listening intently. Smith's normally sour face formed a grin that spanned his entire face, giving him the look of a child in a candy store. The other Agents were not as expressive, but equally as motivated as Smith. It was becoming like old times once more, and they were now convinced that they would win the war.

Only Jones seemed to have any doubts whatsoever. "She's not actually serious, is she?" he said, though it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else.

"She's never been known not to be," Smith replied simply, still enjoying his suddenly bright new future. He was alive once more, forgiven of his past errors, and, most of all, free again to exact revenge on the man formally known as Thomas Anderson. His emotions were more obvious than those of the others. He embraced them now, instead of attempting to block them. That was the lesson he had learned in death, and he planned to never forget it. He also didn't plan to let Neo forget him, ever.


	5. Silence Must be Heard

Act 4: Silence Must be Heard

Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

A/N: One of the stupid 'mush' lines seen in this chapter was probably based on some other fanfic that I read a long time ago. I'm really bad at that kind of stuff and found myself doing that unconsciously. So if some lines look like something you've written, that is why. I'm sorry I couldn't credit you properly. I forgot which fic it was! Forgive me! :(

Neo dreamt that he was sinking. Sinking, farther and farther, deeper and deeper still. The enormous lake he must have fallen into was drowning him. _But wait a second...when did I fall into a lake? There are no lakes...this is a strange dream._

He started to become aware of his surroundings, and even began to enjoy himself. You couldn't go swimming in a lake in this day in age, unless you wanted to go into the Matrix, so dreaming it up was the closest he would get to the sensation. He opened his eyes, expecting to see a clear, blue body of water, and maybe some fish or plants or something. Wouldn't that be nice? After months of seeing nothing but a rusted old ship, what a wonderful break it would be, to be floating along in some fresh water…

It was dark. The feel of the water didn't seem right. Neo noticed once he started to try and swim back to the surface (If there had ever been a surface to begin with) that it was thicker than water. It had the consistency of oil. And what colour was it? It was too dark to see.

Almost in response to Neo's inner questions about his dream's setting, light penetrated the liquid he was swimming in. He swam for the light, and the closer to the surface he got, the clearer the colours were. It wasn't blue; it wasn't even algae green. It was amber-coloured. Neo knew what it was instantly after seeing that vile shade. It was liquefied human flesh.

Neo knew what to expect next, but refused to relive it. Waking up had been the most traumatic experience he could have ever imagined, and he had no desire to go through it again. He would have tried to change direction, and to stop swimming for the top, but he couldn't stand being in the sea of flesh. He tried to wake himself up, but that didn't work either. His lucidity wasn't strong enough.

When Neo reached the top, the actions came naturally to him. He pushed through the moist, slimy barrier and took in a deep breath of air, although it was hardly fresh. Then he looked around while he rested a little, waiting for the machine he expected to come and wrench the metal coil from the socket behind his neck.

Time passed, and no machine came. _This isn't how it went,_ Neo eventually told himself, _but what's different? It looks the same...at least so far it does. Are there..._Neo shuddered involuntarily, at the sickening thought of helpless human bodies encased in glass and wires all around him. Still, he had to know if they were there like before, to understand the dream, so Neo turned his head and looked.

Pods much like his own surrounded his immediate view, so that had not changed. He stared blankly at them, wondering what had possessed his brain to create such a disturbing dream. When the pod to his right began to show strange activity, his interest flared. The person next to him was waking up?

The other pod's thick membrane rose from its inert position and was torn wide open in a single, powerful rip. Neo couldn't look away from it even if he had wanted to. The dream was in control. Slowly, a body began to emerge from the pod, wiping away the disgusting slime from his face and neck. Neo tired to get a clear view of the man, but the cords attached into his own body were pulling at him, and it took a lot of effort.

Then, the man came into crystal clarity. And he was no stranger to Neo. How could he possibly ever forget those eyes...the eyes of the one who had killed him. Smith!

He couldn't understand it! Smith was a machine. How could he be here? What did it mean? The questions were filling Neo's head, questions he didn't have any answers to.

But the dream was not over yet. Not even before Neo had started to accept Smith's presence did his psyche receive another jolt. A clear and very loud laugh began to echo in the dream. Although he could hear the laughing in any direction he turned, it was loudest in front of him. Neo looked towards the sound and searched for the source. The strangest part (To Neo anyway) was that it was a woman laughing...and he knew this voice well. But he couldn't place it.

Before him lay a flat level of floor, even though Neo knew his pod had been several stories up in real life. Wires and tubing were strewn everywhere, along with large, dark shapes - maybe computing units? He traced the path the wires took, and followed them further forward, and a little up. They all converged in roughly the same place. As he stared at that location longer and longer, still listening to the endless laughing of a woman, Neo realized that all those technological pieces connected to a person! It was a woman without a doubt, but her back was turned and Neo could not see her face or any distinguishing things about her aside from that she was wearing a silvery bodysuit of some kind.

He felt an extreme desire to see her face, to know who she was, but at the same time Neo dreaded it. The laughing continued, and the woman covered in cybernetic implants and shining material began to turn around. Neo was starting to be able to see the slightest hint of actual skin. Her face was coming into view and -   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


He woke up.

Neo rubbed the cold sweat off of his face with his soiled sleeves, and then let his palms rest over his weary eyes as he tried to interpret the strange chain of images he had just been overwhelmed with. Although the bunker room that he had fallen asleep in was relatively silent, he could still 'hear' the laughter from his dream echoing in his ears. He had been so close to figuring out who it was...and yet the answer was still so fleeting.

He stopped himself abruptly in the middle of this train of thought. _It was just a dream,_ Neo assured himself, _and it wasn't real. Dreams are just that - dreams. They don't mean anything._ Convincing himself of this gave Neo a sense of comfort and freedom from the obligation of discovering any hidden meanings in this or any dream he had.

With any hope of falling asleep gone, Neo turned over and set his feet on the metal flooring, standing up wearily. He lurched over the second he thought he had his balance, and gripped the side of his bed again to keep himself from falling over completely. The ship was moving at high speeds now, something Neo wasn't used to. He slowly became readjusted to the motion and eventually let go of his support. As he steadied himself, Neo's feet knocked against something on the floor.

Although Neo was the ultimate slob (his apartment in his past life was undeniable proof of this), he could always remember he had left everything. He had no recollection of leaving something on the floor. He bent down, curious to what it was.

His feet had brushed against a tray from the mess hall that was carrying a small dish of the generic slime the crew ate for their meals and a tin cup filled with water. Neo dipped a finger into the cold mush and tasted it, wishing that it would taste like something edible instead of vaguely metallic.

He squatted on the floor and began to eat away at the food that someone had provided him. As he took a gulp of water from the cup, he got a strange feeling of déjà vu. Then he remembered why, and the thought made him smile. Although he still didn't quite understand why Trinity had been so upset, he felt relieved now, positive that she had forgiven him to some extent.

After finishing off the meager contents of his meal, Neo picked up the platter and took it to the mess hall so he could clean it. As he approached it in near darkness, he could hear voices coming from the other side of the door. Neo jerked the door open, balancing the tray with one hand and shielding his eyes from the light emanating from inside the room with the other hand as he entered. Inside, 00 and Dagger were seated at the table. It looked like Dagger was giving her companion the third degree.

"Come on. You have to remember something from before they found you," Dagger said to 00, asserting her opinion on the matter.

"...No. I really don't remember anything before that! It's the truth!" 00 replied. His voice severely lacked the confidence Dagger had when she spoke, and it was making him appear as if he wasn't even so sure of himself. Neo tried to do nothing to intrude on the discussion. He proceeded to head to the other end of the room and do what he had come to do.

Dagger growled, annoyed and frustrated that 00 refused to tell her what she wanted to hear. Looking for support, she turned around in her seat and poked Neo in the spine as he washed his dishes in the nearby sink.

"Neo, don't you think that 00 should remember more than what he says he does? I refuse to believe that the last thing he can recall is waking up after that crew found him lying in the sewage system, dumped as a corpse! There's got to be more than that!" the girl shouted, waving her arms in the air.

"I think you should drop it," Neo responded dryly, not even bothering to turn around. He was not in the mood to deal with Dagger's insensitiveness towards their younger companion and his past. Even so, he could not deny that he had found the story not only odd, but also borderline impossible when he had first heard it from Tank as Morpheus asked for 00 to come onto the Nebuchadnezzar. The whole thing struck him as a bizarre puzzle that was missing a few key pieces that were needed to properly see the whole image. Neo also knew that he was not alone in sharing this perception. Pretty much everyone on the ship had hinted at his or her disbelief at least once. 

As far as they all knew though, the final explanation drawn by the medical officer on board the hovercraft that discovered 00 (that the trauma of his sudden release gave him his amnesia) had been enough to convince Morhpeus that 00 could be useful to the Resistance operations. Morpheus had always possessed a very keen intuition when it came to selecting new recruits, and it looked like he hadn't gone wrong when it came to 00. His innate knowledge of manipulating the Matrix code had been developed so well in such a short time that he had been able to incorporate potent viruses designed by others into the code itself. The tactic had become the backbone of their onslaught against the Matrix, and it was working.

So for now, the crew abided by an unspoken agreement not to press 00 for memories, but to leave it until their role in the Resistance movement was complete, which was supposedly near. No one wanted to traumatize him in case he stopped being able to do what he could. Only Dagger refused to leave the subject be, and she was often interrogating 00 or eavesdropping on what he said in hope of catching him in a lie.

She shook her head at Neo's comment, appearing to be appalled that he would suggest anything along those lines.

"Aren't you the least bit curious as to how he learned how to write that wicked code? That kind of ability doesn't exactly come out of thin air you know!" she argued.

'Well...what about you? Where are you from?" 00 inquired, starting to get desperate.

"Got unplugged a few years ago, sometime in my mid-teens. I spent a lot of time in Zion learning medicine. It's so totally different from what I thought it would be. I had originally wanted to work with Matrix weapons, like guns and stuff, but it turned out I was better at treating injuries than causing them. So I did that, and got put on a ship for a bit to have some 'field experience' as my teachers put it, came back here, and then found myself on this lovely ship! You have to admit, being on this one has got to be tons more interesting than any other with the One on board - Hey! Are you listening?"

00 had fallen into slumber while Dagger recounted her freed life in brief, and was now dozing peacefully with his head on the table, his chest rising and falling to the rhythmic motion of his breathing. Neo sighed, putting the tray and dishes on top of the clean stack.

"How long have you been here?" he asked, trying to deviate from her previous question now that she was no longer occupied with giving an autobiography.

"I don't know," Dagger said childishly, "it can't have been very long. The lights only went out a while ago."

The ship's lights turned on automatically as she spoke. 00 yawned, waking up from his little nap.

"I guess it was longer than you thought," he commented, "can I go now?" Footsteps could be heard approaching the room from the hallway as he spoke. The ship was starting to wake up and continue on its journey. The door creaked and opened up.

"You don't have to ask 00," Trinity replied as she walked into the room, "go get some sleep. I'm sure Dagger won't mind doing some of your work for you."

"Hey! I did not agree to that! I'm not doing his job!" the teenager yelled as 00 got up and retreated to his cabin to get some much needed sleep.

"You don't have a choice," Trinity simply said in return. Dagger pouted, but promptly left the room, slamming the hatch behind her. Neo snickered at Trinity's ability to assert her command position without having to do anything but say what she thought. He said nothing more as she helped herself to a small bowl of slop, sitting down next to him. Neither of them spoke for the next few minutes. They could both sense a certain amount of tension between them that lingered from their dispute.

It was Neo who could finally stand it no longer. What was he supposed to say? What did he have to do? Did he have to do anything?

"Trinity, look," he carefully began. Trinity looked up from her food. She hadn't even begun eating it, but had just been stirring it around with a spoon the past few minutes. She gazed at Neo with a neutral expression on her face, waiting for him to continue with whatever it was he had to say.

"I...uh...um...well..." Neo stammered, groping for words. He gave up quickly, unable to find anything else to say. He hadn't thought ahead of his introduction.

"I'm not good at this," he uttered at the end of his string of nonsensical sounds.

"Neither am I. Spending a good portion of your adult life fighting a war tends to do that to you," Trinity said. Suprisingly enough, she smiled at Neo's honest attempt to say something of importance about them.

"Yeah, I'll bet."

"Why don't we just forget about it? I can live with that. Can you?" Trinity suggested.

Neo looked shocked. "That's it? I thought you were more..."

"Upset?" Trinity finished for him, "yes, I was. And I still am. But, I think I made my point. I could survive inside the Matrix when you were not around. I helped teach you to do the same before you...learned how to use your skills. I don't need to be protected. Just don't forget that, okay?"

Neo nodded. "I get it. No knights in shining armor."

Satisfied with their agreement, Trinity continued to watch Neo, only now it was not because she was waiting for him to speak. She was examining his features, taking note of every inch of his face, memorizing the way it looked. Without even noticing what they were doing, they leaned towards each other for a kiss. Their lips were just millimeters apart when once again the door creaked open. Node strode in hastily, barely noticing that he had caught Trinity and Neo in a somewhat intimate moment.

"Morpheus called a meeting here, so I hope you guys are done eating," he called out. Once he saw the look on their faces, he realized what he had just stepped into and took a step back.

"Whoops, eh, sorry. Didn't meant to intrude or anything," he managed to declare, rubbing the back of his head, embarrassed by what he had done.

"That's all right Node," Neo responded with a grin. He didn't care. He felt as if things were starting to look up again, and was intoxicated by the thought. Happiness was a rarity for them.

Within the next few minutes, the rest of the crew piled into the hovercraft while its systems remained on standby. They seated themselves around the table and waited for Morpheus to come. He was the last to arrive.

"We're very close to Zion, not more than a few hours away," he announced in his usual fashion as he walked in, shutting the hatch noiselessly behind him, "so before we enter the security zone, I want to address something. But not as your captain."

Morpheus certainly had everyone's full attention, and they all peered at him curiously. Only Neo had a hint of what to expect next. It was actually something that had been bugging him. He had gone to ask advice from Morpheus concerning it prior to their last mission, and although they had come to a decision, they both felt that everyone on the ship had to agree for it to work.

"I don't want any of you to reveal to anyone, and I mean anyone, that Neo is the One. Both he and I think this is best," Morpheus stated. Half of the crew stared at him in amazement.

"What?" Dagger exclaimed in surprise after blinking a few times to make herself realize she had not imagined those words.

"But...why? Everyone in Zion has a right to know that the One has finally returned!" Tank retorted.

Morpheus shook his head, undeterred by what Tank and Dagger had said.

"Just put yourselves in Neo's shoes, and then tell me if you would want the same thing," Morpheus told them, "so many people looking to you for nothing less than salvation…I know I would be overwhelmed."

No one said anything to refute that point. Neo felt uneasy just at the thought of it.

"I asked Morpheus to bring this up," he confessed to them, "because I don't want everyone to know. I don't think I could handle it. But I also didn't want to force anyone into silence. Even if Morpheus did order you all not to say anything, someone with a higher rank could still find out. So I'm asking you guys to do this for me as my friends. I want it to be a secret...because you are my friends."

"You know I would never tell anyone. You didn't have to ask," Trinity said, placing her hand over Neo's. Morpheus nodded in agreement.

"I can relate to the whole pressure bit, so count me in," Node cut in.

"But how are we going to explain the whole Agents thing? Or how we managed to pull off this whole mission?" Tank asked. He was not convinced.

"We were given that mission because we survived against three Agents before, though nobody really knows why beyond us. We cannot stop people from speculating things, but as long as there is an uncertainty about what the truth is, no one will fully believe. All we have to do is keep that uncertainty there," Morpheus answered.

"And when we're being debriefed? How are you going to explain how we pulled things off?" Dagger asked.

"We could create some sort of collective lie. As long as we all agree on what the official story is going to be, there should not be too much of a problem convincing the head office that it is the true one," the captain suggested.

"I don't know Morpheus. It sounds a little crazy," Tank replied.

"Sometimes crazy works," Morpheus pointed out.

Tank looked over at Neo, who was imploring with Tank to give in to his request. Tank considered everything, and then smiled.

"All right, all right, my lips are sealed," Tank finally said.

"Mine too!" 00 proclaimed.

The crew then looked at Dagger in search of her answer. She looked back at them uneasily, not liking this kind of attention. She gave in.

"Fine, I get the picture. I won't tell another soul, not even a rat," she swore unhappily.

"Thank you," Neo said, "I feel better already."

"Then let's get this show on the road! Next stop, Zion!" Tank said loudly. The crew said a few more words along those lines to each other and then went to their stations to get the ship under way.

Two hours passed by without incident, and to all they felt as quick as the ship they rode in. The anticipation rose within the crew. Trinity, Tank, Node, and Morpheus had not been to Zion in a long time. 00 and Neo had never been there before. It was, a second time, too good to be true.

They were just another hour away from the fabled city when an alarm started to blare from a console in the cockpit. Trinity and Morpheus, who were the ones driving at the time, investigated what it meant by reading the console's text screen, but neither were too pleased by what they saw. They looked at each other for an instant, then without a word they turned the ship around completely and headed back the way they came at full speed.

"Get the EMP ready," Trinity announced through the intercom.

"What's going on?" Tank asked. Neo, Node, Dagger, and 00 gathered around Tank's speaker to hear the answer.

"We've received a distress call from another ship. We're going back to help," she replied. The intercom went out.

"This is bad," Tank muttered, "very bad."

00 looked terrified. Nobody else was at ease any more. Sentinels had probably caught the ship that had sent the call and were now defenseless from using their own EMP to ward the machines off. Dagger groaned, plodding away from Tank's station back to her own. They were headed back into the belly of the beast.


	6. Push the Limits

**Act 5: Push the Limits **

Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

A/N: Hey kids! It's the fic that wouldn't die! Please leave feedback if you have the time. I'm terrible at editing, so I can use all the help I can get! And I love it (who doesn't?). ^^

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Out of the still atmosphere of the ancient pipelines came the Nebuchadnezzar, surging forward at breakneck speeds and leaving behind it a trail of smoky air and the whining noise of the engines slowly dying off into the everlasting night. The crew was pulling out all the stops to get to the other ship as soon as possible. The ship under attack was without a doubt disabled by now. If they were to rescue anyone, they had to get there fast, or the machines would get there before them.

Nobody was really clear on which ship it was either, and that caused further debate about the sanity of what they were trying to do. Morpheus had admitted that he didn't know of any ship that was posted in the region from where the distress call came from, but he was still adamant about treating it like a rescue operation. All the same, not everyone was totally convinced, particularly Dagger and Node. But, they still did as Morpheus asked, and set up medical equipment to treat the wounded they may find. In the last few minutes of the trip, the anxiety was everywhere, marking everyone's faces with extreme apprehensiveness and worry.

Trinity and Morpheus continued to man the cockpit, and pulled the hovercraft to an unsteady stop. Trinity leaned forward to see through the glass, narrowing her eyes in a futile attempt to get a better look at what was outside.

"Morpheus, there's nothing here!" she declared after a few seconds of alternating her vision from the sensor logs below and the window in front of her.

"Are you sure?" Morpheus asked. He didn't want to leave anything unexamined, for he was determined to find the ship before it was too late. He moved over to the ruined chair next to her and examined the readings. Trinity leaned away to give him a better look, and then gestured to the outside.

"There's nothing here. No signs of any kind of electromagnetic power, and if there was a powered-down ship at the bottom, we would have hit some part of it," she continued.

The captain reached for the intercom and flipped it on. "Tank, Neo, go to the lower decks. Turn on the spotlights and open the crane portal. Tell me what you see."

Tank scrambled out of his seat, letting Node take it so he could use the EMP if the need came, while Neo began to descend the ladder. Tank beckoned for 00 to come along, and he complied after some hesitation. The three climbed down the ladder until they reached the very bottom of the Neb. Tank led the way to the control panel, and turned it on while 00 and Neo adjusted the spotlights so that they faced the now closed portal. They came on right after, sending bright white lights at the floor.

"Ready?" Tank asked. Neo and 00 nodded, and walked to the edge of the trap door. 

"Okay, I'm opening the door."

He seized the handles to the large and rather heavy door, and pulled with all his might to make them move. The door creaked open slowly and not without resistance. Eventually, the space was wide enough for Neo and 00 to send beams of light out of. The fluorescent lights completely lit up the entire bottom of the sewer. When they saw what was below, all three froze in horror.

"Oh my God," Neo breathed. He could not believe it.

"What is it? What do you see?" Morpheus asked again over the intercom, not enthused by Neo's reaction. 00 stepped away from the open hatch out of fear of losing his balance. Tank closed his eyes and answered Morpheus sadly.

"It's the Genesis. They're gone. The entire ship was destroyed," he announced with a heavy tone. And he was right. For right below their ship, they could see nothing but sewage water and metal scraps that had been once part of another vessel. On one part that by chance happened to be right below the hatch, the ship's name was inscribed in fading yellow paint.

From the cockpit, Trinity and Morpheus could now see this for themselves. The illumination from their lights showed them the same scene it showed the trio down below. Morpheus lowered his head and closed his eyes upon viewing the wreckage as if he was in deep contemplation.

"Morpheus?" Trinity asked gently.

"We have to examine the wreckage to see if anyone survived," he told her, "I won't leave any stone unturned."

Trinity nodded and climbed down the ladder to tell the crew of Morpheus' orders and get them organized into search parties. Morpheus remained above for a few seconds longer, his head still bent and eyes still closed, before following Trinity down. He wasn't even halfway down the ladder when he could hear Trinity explaining what was going on to the best of her knowledge.

"The Genesis was another ship in the strike force Zion put together. It had the same mission as we did: to take out a portion of the Matrix code using those bombs 00 helped to create," she told everyone. Morpheus strode up to the group to join in on the briefing.

"What I don't get is what were they doing so far out? They should have destroyed their target long ago," Node said. He didn't understand what had possessed the crew to stay out in the danger zone when all the attacking ships had been called back to Zion.

"I think I have an answer," Morpheus said, shaking his head, "I knew the captain of the Genesis. She had a fierce hatred of the machines, and always tried to cause as much damage to the Matrix as she could whenever she was on the inside. I'm betting they jumped the gun on their captain's orders. The Genesis was probably on their way to the Fields on the surface to take out as much of their potential power supply as they could while the AI were distracted by the attacks on the Matrix. That was the next phase of the plan."

"That far up? On their own? If you ask me, that ship was insane to try and go alone, if that was indeed what she had decided," Dagger admitted.

"That was how Obsidian worked," Morpheus replied, using the captain's name for the first time, "catching her enemy off guard with suicidal strategies. It looks like her luck ran out this time." He sighed heavily, and then issued orders.

"Let's go so we can search the area as quickly as possible. I don't want any more Squiddies catching us here like they did with the Genesis. Node and 00 will remain here to man the ship and the EMP. The rest of us are going down to search for survivors."

With that, the crew silently went to fetch various supplies and the only first aid kit while the ship touched down on the sewer bottom and powered down. Five people filed out of the Neb's main hatch equipped with flashlights and split into two teams. As they trudged through the ankle-deep water that was a putrid grey colour, Neo couldn't help but feel that searching for survivors was futile. How could anyone survive like this for hours: alone, with no light, in the middle of the equivalent of a polluted swamp?

Trinity was quick to notice Neo's discomfort, and took his hand in an effort to calm his nerves. She was rewarded with a small squeeze, and a reassuring smile from Neo. Still, she really did not want to look for floating corpses either.

"Morpheus, you and Dagger have the only first aid kit. We'll look for anything useful that can be salvaged and call you if we find someone," she called out to the captain. He yelled an 'all right!' in response, and headed in the other direction with Dagger.

"Come on, I want to find the EMP," Tank suggested. Together, the three waded towards the remains of the main deck, or rather what they thought was the main deck by the fact that the Genesis' nameplate was there.

"Something is not right about this," Tank said to one in particular while he picked up the odd piece of wreckage along the way to examine it.

"I know. I don't get it. Why didn't they use their EMP?" Neo asked while he held both his and Tank's flashlights so that he could use both his hands. Trinity moved off some distance away from the two men as she scrutinized some wet and burnt circuitry plates in order to determine whether they could be repaired.

"I have no idea," Tank confided to Neo, "buthere it is."

He plunged his hands deeper into the murky water and brought to the surface what was clearly the activation switch to the pulse. Even to Neo's untrained eye, it appeared to be relatively intact. Trinity moved back to their position and came to the same conclusion.

"They tried to use it," she pointed out, tapping the red switch that was in the 'on' position. It was exactly like the one on board the Nebuchadnezzar. Neo wondered if they were standard on all the ships Zion sent out.

"Let's bring back as much of it as we can find," Tank suggested, "I want to know what went wrong."

They spent the next twenty minutes picking out bits and pieces of the weapon and stuffing it into one of the body bags that had been brought for a very similar purpose. By the time they had collected all the pieces they could find, Trinity had decided that that was all they were going to get out of the wreckage and they were headed back for their own ship. They were nearly there when Neo heard Dagger's cry of surprise.

"Here! Over here!" she clamored excitedly, "I found someone! He's okay!"

Tank said he would head back to the ship to drop off the wreckage they had collected, and left Neo and Trinity to converge on Dagger's position. By the time Neo and Trinity had reached her, they found her hovering over a squatting figure with Morpheus a few strides away, clearly relieved. The teenage girl finally stepped away from the man, her head shaking in disbelief.

"I don't believe it. There's not a scratch on you. It's practically a miracle," she breathed, very amazed at this discovery.

"I guess I got lucky this time," the man replied in a thick British accent. Dagger picked up her flashlight and pointed it at him so that everyone could se who it was.

"People," she announced proudly to the newcomers, "this is Data."

Although it was still too dark for Neo and the others to properly distinguish all of Data's features, such as what colour his hair and eyes were, they could see that he had a somewhat thin and tired face surrounded by limp, thin hair and clothes sagging from the weight of water. He looked oddly familiar to Neo, but from where he just couldn't say. Maybe he had seen him a few times inside the Matrix, in his old life.

Data smiled as a form of welcome and thanks for his rescue, but then his face became very grave.

"The othersI found their bodies and let them float away downstream. I didn't expect anyone to find them, or me for that matter," he confided.

"So no one else is left alive?" Morpheus asked, his voice tinged with disappointment. Data shook his head.

"No, I'm the only one left."

"Hey!" Tank yelled from the other end of the wreck, moving slowly towards them while dragging something along with him.

Dagger scrambled over to him as she tugged her medical kit and flashlight along with her before dropping them in the water so that she could help Tank carry. Trinity pointed her light at the pair to see what they were carrying, and illuminated the figure of a woman close to her age. She had slightly tanned skin and short black hair. She was coughing and sputtering water while Tank explained how he had found her.

"After I had brought the parts we found in, I came out to see if I could find anything else of use. I found her under a large piece of the floor plating over there," he said, jerking his head in the general direction of where he meant, "I thought she was dead."

"I thought you said there were no other survivors," Morpheus said to Data. He could only shrug back.

"Sorry to disappoint you," the woman spat in between coughs. Her attitude was almost volatile. Dagger proceeded to treat her while Morpheus assumed the job of supporting her body. She put up a considerable fight and resorted to trying to break free from Morpheus and Tank's hold and shove Dagger away.

"I'm fine!" she insisted, "and I can walk on my own Morpheus!"

"Yea, you're fine if you ignore the fact that you have a nasty bruise on your head," Dagger remarked in a 'as a matter of fact' tone, "but I guess I won't be able to convince you until you start seeing pink elephants, eh?"

"Please, let our medics treat you inside at the very least," Morpheus prompted. The woman conceded, and followed Dagger into the Nebuchadnezzar, but without allowing anyone to support her. Neo and Trinity took up the rear, with Data right in front of them.

"Is that?" Neo ventured.

Data nodded, wiping his face with his hands to try and smear away some of the soot and grime staining it. "Yes. That's Obsidian, my captain. She's one tough bird."

It was then that Neo noticed that Data was carrying with him a few pieces of some machine he didn't recognize. "What is that?" he asked, pointing at the bits.

"This? A prototype I was working on before we were attacked," Data answered quickly, clutching the parts even closer to his chest, "I was hoping I could fix it up again. It's kind of a personal project."

"A prototype for what?" Trinity said. 

Data never answered her. Tank began yelling over the intercom at that moment that they all had to get inside and they didn't have time to chat. At least for now.

Once everyone was inside, they sealed the hatches once more and they left the site of the Genesis' wreck. Morpheus went back up to the cockpit with Tank to resume their course back to Zion.

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Obsidian sat inside the medical ward as the Neb turned around and began to go deeper into the planet. She was clearly trying her best to restrain her desire to get up and leave, and Node and Dagger did their best to respect her wishes by examining her as quickly as possible. Dagger tied a hasty bandage to the scabbed wound on her head while Node scrutinized her vital readings from his monitor. He turned away, satisfied.

"It looks like there isn't any permanent damage, so all you have to do is take it easy for a while, and that shouldn't be hard given our destination," Node said cheerily, shutting down the medical equipment.

"Just where are we headed?" Obsidian inquired as she practically jumped off the metal table.

"Back on our original course. To Zion," Dagger replied.

"Zion? No!"

The captain of the Genesis dashed out of the medical ward, leaving behind a very confused Node and Dagger. She began to take any ladder that led upwards, and eventually made it to the cockpit, where she blocked Morpheus' access to the controls.

"We can't leave. The mission is incomplete," she stated firmly.

Undaunted by her outright contradiction to his decision, Morpheus frowned and tried to move Obsidian out of his way unsuccessfully. She firmly planted herself to the spot she was standing on and barely moved.

"Turn this ship around now," she ordered, "I'm not moving until you do."

Morpheus looked over at Tank, searching for a solution to this problem. "How far are we from the crash site?"

"Far enough not to be detected by anything that comes by it in search of more things to blow up," Tank answered uneasily. Morpheus could tell that he was starting to really miss his native home and did not want to postpone the return trip again. But still, his mind reminded him, Obsidian was a fellow captain. He felt it necessary to hear her out. If Morpheus was anything, it was honorable.

"Land the ship," he decided finally to Tank before addressing Obsidian again, "we'll talk this one out. Fair enough?"

Tank complied with Morpheus' request and brought the ship to a stand still. They both looked at Obsidian, who did not appear to be entirely convinced.

"That's not good enough. Turn the ship around," she reiterated.

"No. This is not your ship, and I prefer to know what suicide mission you're proposing we undertake before I even consider turning around. Our combined crew will decide our course of action. Now you can either accept that, or I can have you dragged out," Morpheus threatened. Obsidian glared at him for a moment, then stormed off.

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They convened on the main deck, and Morpheus allowed Obsidian to take the floor and state her case.

"We were on a mission of the utmost importance when we were attacked. We were attempting to infiltrate a section of the Matrix and delete some key files from within," she stated.

"That sounds like what we've been doing this whole time. What was so special about these files?" Node asked.

"They're part of the Agent programs," Obsidian replied. She certainly had everyone's attention now.

"We managed to locate a source component to their programming on one of our other runs," Data filled in, "we theorized that if this piece of their program was deleted, it would seriously weaken them, and that would make everyone's job easier. Without the Agents to pose a threat, the Matrix could be shut down much faster," he added. Neo couldn't help but think that he had put a touch of malice into that comment. He wasn't sure why, but it bothered him.

"It's much more than that! It has the potential to screw up the logic of the Matrix itself, which could in turn cause a shut down now!" Obsidian declared.

"Why were you assigned to this mission by yourself? Even two ships would have stood a better chance than one," Trinity inquired, "or did you decide to ditch them and go kamikaze?"

"Zion wanted to keep it as secret as possible," Obsidian said sharply, "they didn't want the machines to find out. They agreed with me in thinking a fast hit was better than a prepared one."

"And we were so close before," she continued, trying her best to convince as many of Morpheus' crew as possible that it could be done, "we had located the target. Data was pinpointing it when the Squiddies attacked us. If it hadn't been for them, we would have done it," she spat, still angry over the thought.

Neo finally spoke up. "So you want to go back inside, relocate this part of the Matrix, and destroy it? It sounds too easy."

"Trust me, it is a little harder than it sounds. But I am positive that it can be done. Zion knew I could do it!"

"Enough. We will take a vote. Whatever decision we come to will be the course of action we pursue," Morpheus said, "but all of you know that there are other ways."

Obsidian laughed. "What 'other ways'? Surely you don't mean the One, do you? There is no One, Morpheus. 'He' is not coming. It's just an old legend. I don't believe in that shit, nor anything the Oracle says. We have to take action ourselves. I'm going even if I have to walk all the way back and build what I need from scrap."

"I'm not," Data announced. Obsidian looked at him as if he were a traitor.

"What?" she said in a barely audible voice.

"I'm voting against going," he repeated coldly, "we need to regroup and rethink our position. Going back to Zion will provide us with such an opportunity."

"You" Obsidian growled. Morpheus stepped in between the two crew members and asked that everyone continue their deliberations. Neo watched the confrontation, and found himself staring at Data. He seemed even more familiar when he was scowling in anger. Neo made a mental note to ask Trinity and Morpheus about him when this was over with, just to alleviate his growing anxiety.

"I'm with Data. Coming out here was dangerous enough given the number of Squiddies. But staying here is insane. We're pushing it," Tank said. He crossed his arms, and obviously could not have his mind changed by anyone.

Neo looked over at Trinity, who had been oddly silent during this meeting. He could tell that she did not like Obsidian's attitude, and felt challenged by it, especially by her comment about the One. He knew Trinity shared a similar point of view with Obsidian and also believed in taking control, but was not so dismissive about 'old legends' now that she was a part of them in a strange way.

"I say we go for it," she decided, much to everyone's surprise. Neo saw it for what it was. She was challenging Obsidian's point of view and her authority. Trinity wanted to prove to Obsidian that the Nebuchadnezzar's crew was more than capable of taking on anything.

00 was next to come to vote. "I vote for taking on the mission," he said quietly. It was another unexpected vote; 00 has always been cautious and quiet.

"You're all mental," Dagger said to Obsidian, Trinity, and 00, "this is stupid. I'm against it. I want to go home. The component thingy isn't going to be going anywhere, so why should we be in such a rush?"

Neo recounted the votes in his head. So far, it was tied up evenly. He tried to think about what he wanted to do, but couldn't come up with anything. Sure, he wanted to go to Zion, but he also understood the necessity of destroying the Agents and the Matrix. He said nothing, and hoped that Node and Morpheus would vote for the same thing so that it did not come down to him.

"Zion ordered us to return. We were not told to deviate or take up any other mission, and that is good enough for me. I think we should head back to Zion, but if we do go for this, I'll do my part," Node said.

"Well, I'm sure you are going to be against it Morpheus, so thank you _oh so_ much for this lovely piece of democracy and your subtle manipulation of my only remaining crew member," Obsidian remarked sarcastically.

"Actually, I believe we can do it," Morpheus said, "and I can relate to your position. I will vote in favor of going, which means that the sides are tied, and the outcome falls on Neo's choice. Choose what your mind tells you is right, not what we do."

_Oh, no_, Neo thought to himself. This was exactly what he had tried to avoid. He didn't know what to decide! He could already feel Dagger's eyes imploring him to support her side, and Obsidian's ice-cold stare was warning him bad would happen if he didn't support hers. Everyone, save for Morpheus and Trinity, were trying to convince him to choose their choice through their looks. It was worse than trying to choose between the blue pill and the red pill. What was he supposed to use? Ennie, meenie, mynie, mo?

Morpheus had already said that he did not care what Neo chose, and he believed it. A part of him wanted to defy Obsidian for inadvertently insulting him, another wanted to prove her wrong. Still another wanted to go somewhere safe with Trinity, but then he remembered that she didn't want to be taken care of in that way. She didn't want the easy way out. And if that was what she wanted, he eventually concluded, then it was what he wanted too. He would prove Obsidian wrong with her. He would show her that the One did exist.

"Let's do it," he said, settling the matter. Morpheus didn't waste any time after that and promptly began issuing orders.

"All right then. Obsidian, go with Node to input the location coordinates. The rest of us will set up the gear and charge the EMP."

"I'm going to have a look at the Genesis' EMP. Maybe I can get it working. It may come in handy," Tank said to Morpheus before retreating to a corner of the main deck to work. Obsidian followed Node up a level to help him. Dagger, 00, and Trinity began setting up various pieces of equipment on the deck. The only ones that remained close enough to hear each other were Morpheus, Neo, and Data.

"Uhsir?" Data asked Morpheus.

"Yes?"

"If it's all right with you, I'd like to repair my prototype. It too may prove to be useful."

"A prototype for what?" Morpheus asked, echoing Trinity's question.

"Itit is a portable jack-in to the Matrix. I was testing it while inside when we were attacked. It saved my life. The others were able to get me out when the ship's power blew because it runs on its own power supply."

"Interesting" Morpheus commented, intrigued by the concept. He then added in something else. "Very well. But if someone needs your help, you assist them. Clear?"

"Yes sir!" Data exclaimed before heading off to work on it.

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They managed to return to the crash site almost as quickly as they had left it. As they put the finishing touches on the equipment, Neo took an opportunity to speak to Morpheus privately.

"Morpheus, what do we tell Obsidian and Data? Should we tell that that I'm probably the One?"

"Not probably, Neo, you are the One. But I am not sure we should divulge that information to them. You have seen Obsidian's attitude towards the concept. I think that even if we did tell her, she would not believe us. Perhaps it should remain a secret."

"So I guess that's a no," Neo said, laughing.

"Not necessarily," Morpheus pointed out, "in the end, it comes down to what you are comfortable with. This is a question of your identity, after all. If you decide to keep it a secret, I can only hope that you can keep it that way."

"I don't want her or Data to know," Neo admitted, "at least not yet. I don't know why, but I don't trust them."

"Perhaps it is because you do not know them," the captain suggested.

"No, that's not it. It wasn't like this when Dagger and Node came on board. I justit doesn't feel right."

Morpheus placed a reassuring hand on Neo's shoulder and smiled. "I'm sure it's nothing. You'll figure it out in time," he assured him.

"Morpheus, we're ready over here," Trinity called from the center of the main deck. The two men joined up with the group in the center.

"Are the coordinates entered?" Morpheus asked Obsidian.

"15497.48736.805, that's it," she answered, reading the numbers off of a monitor.

"Good. Trinity, Node, Neo, and Dagger will accompany you and Data inside. We'll monitor from here," Morpheus said, referring to himself, Tank, and 00.

"You're not coming?" Dagger asked him.

"No, I wouldn't want to steal the show from Obsidian," he replied. His response garnered a few nervous laughs and another sarcastic glare from his fellow captain.

The group that was set to go inside took seats in the metal dentist-like chairs. Data turned on his newly repaired prototype and connected it to the circuitry that would be connecting him to the Matrix. Within a few seconds, Neo heard the machines whirring into life, saw a green flash of code, and was inside the Matrix once more.


	7. The Crusades

Act 6: The Crusades

Disclaimer:__ The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

A/N: If you've been reading this since I first posted it way back in June of 2001, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Many things have ermdelayed me, like school, losing my notes, more school, etc. I just want everyone to know that I will finish this. It's just going to take me some more time. As always, I love getting reviews, so thanks again!

And, in case you didn't notice, I don't have a beta-reader. I did my best to make sure everything made sense and was interesting, but I doubt it's perfect. Criticism is the only way I'll know for sure, so please review! Please! I'm begging you!

* * *

When Neo became aware of where they were, he couldn't help but be surprised. They had certainly wound up in what he thought to be the least likely of places to find important Matrix coding. It wasn't a top-security government building. It wasn't even a cave in the middle of some faraway desert.

"Where are we?" Dagger asked the older members of the team. Trinity scanned the room they had entered with a quizzical expression.

"A house?" she said, no doubt convinced that they had entered the Matrix in the wrong place.

They had materialized near the phone inside a rather spacious parlour room in what appeared to be an old house that was unused. Grey sheets covered most of the furniture, and dust covered what they didn't. There was no power, and the place was dark because it was nighttime. To Neo, it appeared to be the perfect setting for one of those movies about ghosts and specters. Nothing appeared to be working.

Obsidian didn't answer either of the two questions. Instead, she picked up her phone and dialed the Neb's contact number.

"What's our location?" she asked Tank, who was acting as their operator.

"Somewhere in Canada," he replied. The connection wasn't great, and his voice was muffled by static.

"Because no one suspects the Canadians" Obsidian muttered just loud enough that everyone in the room heard her. Dagger couldn't resist a small giggle as Obsidian exchanged a few more words over the phone before hanging up.

"Let's go. We don't want to attract any unwanted attention, so the faster we do this, the better," Trinity suggested. Without even bothering to see if Obsidian approved, she picked up the suitcase containing the prepared viral bomb and headed towards the house's main hallway. The others followed suit, with Dagger, Obsidian, and Data sandwiched in between Trinity, Node, and Neo. Node absently touched his cell phone, the only link to the Neb that they had. When he noticed that it wasn't online, Neo could see the twinge of panic Node was experiencing resonating through the Matrix Code.

"My cellit's dead," Node said carefully. Obsidian snorted.

"Of course it is. We're maintaining radio silence with the ship. What do you think the machines will do if they detect a cellular phone call being made in a house where no one is supposed to be?" she replied as-a-matter-of-factly.

Node paused in mid-step as he heard this.

"You meanwe're cut off?"

"No. It's not like we can't contact the ship. We're just not going to unless we have to. And we're only going to do that once we're ready to leave," the Egyptian said.

"Thatdoesn't bother you?" Neo pried.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Scared that you don't have Big Brother keeping an eye on you?" Obsidian snapped sarcastically, drawing looks from everyone.

Dagger tried to change the subject. She was not in the mood to hear more about why Obsidian was 'mature'. "How come you guys just didn't use a hard-line to get in here? You know, come in at the nearest entrance and drive here?"

"I wish it had been that easy," Data answered distastefully, "but this house doesn't have a fixed geographical position. Even if we drove up to it, by the time we arrived at the front door it would be gone."

"That's just" Dagger commented, before becoming abnormally silent. Neo was inclined to agree. The house was just plain creepy. It really was something out of an old horror movie.

Despite the disturbing atmosphere, nothing threatened the group, and they managed to secure the first floor with no difficulty. Obsidian took another glance around to double check that nothing around them posed a threat, and refastened her gun to her belt.

"Data, did you ever find where the coordinates for the centerpoint are?" she asked her shipmate. Data shook his head.

"Okay, so why don't we split up and find it?" she suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," Trinity agreed, "Neo, Data, you two take the lower floors. Node, Dagger, check out the rest of this floor. Obsidian and I will search the attic."

* * *

Dagger rummaged through random cupboards in the dusty kitchen while Node simply looked at the countertops briefly, focusing more of his attention on covering Dagger. There was no one else in the room, but that didn't stop him from being overly suspicious of everything that reached his gaze.

"I don't even understand what I'm supposed to be looking for," Dagger complained.

"You're supposed to use your mind to pick out any inconsistencies in what you're looking at," Node reminded her.

"Then maybe you should try. I was never good at that wacky stuff."

She stepped away from the cupboard and allowed Node to take her place while she took out her gun and began to cover him.

"I don't think anything's here," Node decided after a few minutes of examination.

"You sure?" Dagger asked while she tilted her head to face him while he spoke.

"Pretty. I'm not as good as Neo, but I don't see anything funny," he assured her.

The atmosphere was getting to Dagger though, and was making her jumpy. While she waited for Node to complete his search, she scanned the area several times over just to be safe. Suddenly, she tensed.

"Please tell me you just saw that," she whispered to Node, staring directly at the place where she had seen the movement.  
Node stared at the same place, squinting while he tried to see it with both his eyes and his mind, but noted nothing out of the ordinary. "See what?"

"Something so moved over there just now," she insisted, pointing at the spot.

Wordlessly, the two approached the spot in the hallway, weapons drawn and safeties off, ready to strike. Node dared to enter first, while Dagger watched his back.

They found nothing but an empty hallway.

Node simply gave Dagger a pitying look, figuring that she was just being jumpy. She didn't look back, still fixated on the spot. She was sure she had seen something.

"What do you say we check out the living room?" she asked guardedly, suddenly deciding that she wanted to get as far away from there as possible.

* * *

Upstairs, Trinity and Obsidian were searching the attic with little success. They hadn't thought to bring flashlights, so they did their best to fumble around in the dark. Secretly, Trinity tried to look more at the Matrix code than the objects, flexing a muscle Neo had taught her to use. She stared fiercely at areas, and sometimes managed to catch a glimpse of green code. But, based on what she saw and felt, there was nothing here.

"I get the feeling that this would be so much easier from the ship," she commented dryly, blinking a few times to relax her eyes.

"You're right about that. But that's irrelevant. We'll find the centerpoint and destroy it no matter what it takes," Obsidian replied forcefully, as if there should be no debate about the matter.

Trinity paused her search to look at Obsidian. As far as she was concerned, Obsidian had all the classic signs of being obsessed with destroying the Matrix. "How long ago did Zion assign this mission to you anyway?" she questioned curiously.

"I started looking for this centerpoint six months ago."

"That's not what I asked," Trinity pointed out, "when did Zion tell you to destroy it?"

Obsidian pushed some hair out of her face and sighed. "Not too long ago. A few weeks maybe? I'm not sure."

Trinity decided to leave it at that, but stopped again, realizing that she was looking more at Obsidian's code than her RSI. It flickered uneasily and changed sporadically as she answered her question. She knew that changing pattern.

Obsidian was lying.

* * *

"Morpheus, can you take the chair for a few minutes?" Tank asked the captain.

Striding up to the younger man, Morpheus nodded, chuckling. "Certainly. Bathroom break?"

"Nah. I want to look at the Genesis' EMP again."

Morpheus settled into the chair in front of the monitors and was quickly able to pick up what was going on in the Matrix, though not in the house the group had ventured into. They had no way to lock onto it, so all they could do was wait until they were contacted to bring them out.

Tank opened up the bodybag that he had filled with the remnants of the Genesis' EMP and continued rebuilding the weapon, examining each piece one at a time. He was almost done (just the detonator and a few fuses were left), and he still hadn't figured out what was wrong.

"I understand it Morpheus," he said, "the components of this EMP are probably in better shape than ours, if you don't count the fact that they've been trashed by water. Why didn't it work?"

"Are the fuses ruined? They tend to corrode rather quickly," he suggested. Tank picked up the tiny fragments and brought them millimeters away from his eyes.

"Nope. But that just leaves the detonator"

Upon picking up the detonator, which was still in the 'on' position, he flipped it around to examine its underside.

"Oh Christ" he managed to say before scrambling from his spot on the floor to show the piece to Morpheus, who picked it up carefully. He quickly saw what Tank had: the detonator wires were split in two.

"That cut is too clean. Someone separated the detonator from the rest of the EMP," Morpheus uttered, the realization of what this meant dawning on him.

"Someone sabotaged it"

"Yes. But is the saboteur deador alive?"

* * *

Neo and Data made a more silent pair as they searched the lower floors for signs of the exact spot to place the bomb. Neo was quiet because he was too busy reading everything in terms of its Matrix code, and Data, he could only guess. Neo simply assumed that the mission brought back bad memories to Data. He did nearly die the last time he was in this house.

It only took Neo about thirty seconds to locate the spot where the Matrix files were hidden. The area was different from the rest of the house when viewed as Code. There were layers upon layers of coding that kept it invisible and protected, but the activity emanating from it was impossible to disguise. Waves upon waves of green symbols went in and out of that one spot in the span of a few seconds.

Looking over at Data, he saw that he was scrutinizing a corner opposite his. He had squatted down and was gently touching the wall with his fingers. Suddenly, he rose with a triumphant grin.

"We found it!" Data yelled.

_What?_ Neo thought, _there's no way in hell it could be there. What's going on?_

He tried to figure it out in his head during the time it took for the others to join him and Data in the basement, but came up with no other explanation except that Data was wrong. He had to be. Neo was positive that he had read the Matrix code correctly. The spot was where he was, in another corner of the room.

Was that the problem? Was he being too cocky again, like Morpheus had hinted?

He was still thinking about it when Trinity and Obsidian came jogging into the room, the last pair to arrive. Data reported his discovery to them, which caused Obsidian to break into a triumphant grin.

"Perfect. Now let's trash the sucker and get out!" she said happily, like the task was nothing more than ripping the hood ornament off of some random car. Reluctantly, Trinity offered her the briefcase, but hesitated slightly. During the tiny pause, she glanced in Neo's direction to see if he approved.

Knowing that this would probably be his only opportunity to make it clear to his crewmates that something was wrong, Neo approached Trinity and Obsidian, who were in the middle of the room between him and Data.

"You're not pulling the trigger Neo," Obsidian insisted, assuming that's what he wanted to do.

"No, it's not that. I don't knowI'm not sure about this," Neo replied vaguely, catching Trinity's eye. He hoped she would get the message.

"Why not?" Obsidian demanded, getting irritated.

"It just seems too easy!"

Shocked that he would say such a thing, Obsidian cut around Trinity and positioned herself millimeters away from Neo, her brow furrowed with anger.

"Listen pretty boy. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has been easy about this mission. You didn't spend weeks trying to find this house, pin down an algorithm to track it, and then get your ship blown into a billion pieces just as you were about to nuke it. Just fuck off! You think that's easy? You don't know anything!" she raged. All it did was make Neo angry. Oddly enough, he felt the same way Obsidian said she did: like she didn't know anything either.

The whole room tensed up as the captain and he glared at each other, each one refusing to concede any ground to the other. Neo sensed yet another rant coming on from the fuming woman and started to wonder if he could use his powers to shut her mouth and get away with it when Trinity broke them up.

"For Christ's sake!" she cursed as she pushed the two apart in order to hand the briefcase to Node. "Data, Node, set the bomb at maximum. We'll just blow up the whole room."

"Oh no. I'm throwing the switch. I've come too far not to give myself that as satisfaction!" Obsidian objected, waving her fist at the brunette.

"Fine. Just do it now instead of later," Trinity replied. She didn't bother to hide her own annoyance and spoke as curtly as possible. Feeling that she had gotten the message across, she nodded to Neo and Dagger and walked out of the room. "One minute should do it," she yelled over her shoulder after handing the suitcase to Node.

"You're not that subtle you know," Obsidian taunted Trinity just before she managed to leave the room completely, "stop trying to protect your boyfriend. It's disgusting." The comment made Trinity freeze in mid-step just for a second, but she didn't answer or turn around. Neo walked out right after her, unsure as to how to respond to Obsidian, with Dagger on her heels.

"You okay?" Neo murmured to Trinity as they made their way to the back door of the manor. He leaned closer to her while they walked, trying to assess her reaction to Obsidian's remarks. She sighed in response before offering Neo a small smile.

"I'll be fine. Just keep me from doing anything stupid."

Neo sensed the others (he wasn't sure who was who) fleeing the basement at full speed and estimated that they had roughly fifteen seconds before the virus was triggered. As one team, the six people sprinted out of the house (which did not protest in anyway) and took cover a hundred meters away. Neo could even hear Node counting down the seconds to when the house was set to explode.

"Five" Node panted before bracing himself.

Nothing happened.

"Why didn't that thing explode?" Trinity demanded once she realized that the house wasn't about to be destroyed. She stared incredulously at the trio who had activated the device.

"It must have. I armed it myself," Obsidian asserted.

"Was the detonator connected to the explosives and the computer?"

"Of course it was! I'm not six years old! I had Data connect them!"

_That's what happened. I'm sure of it,_ Neo realized. The doubt that had entered his mind was long gone. There was no way that two key mistakes could have been made. And he had been the one to commit both.

"I'm going to" Neo started angrily, reaching for his gun. He looked around the empty field where they had wound up, searching for the man, but found him nowhere.

"He's still inside! What the hell is he doing?" Node exclaimed, not believing his eyes. He stood up, brushed the foliage off of his pants, and started to jog back towards the large house. Neo and the others followed his lead, and Trinity pulled out her cell phone and dialed the Nebuchadnezzar.

"Operator," Tank said in greeting. He sounded seriously stressed out.

"Tank, get a lock on the house now! The bomb didn't go off, and we can't lose track of it!" she ordered while running with the others to the back door.

"I think I've got it," Tank informed her. Back in the real world, his hand were flying across the many keyboards and buttons strewn around his post. Morpheus skirted back and forth behind him, doing everything he could to assist the operator.

"Good. We're going back in. Data is still in there, and we've got to find out what-," Trinity told Tank before he cut her off.

"No! Wait a second!" he demanded, "there's something you've got to know!"

"What is it?" Trinity asked. While she talked, she and the others drew their weapons and assumed defensive positions. None of them were about to take any chances now. Trinity signaled for an orchestrated break in, but Obsidian was too impatient.

"We can't wait! The house might change its location any second now!" she protested. She charged the door without a second thought and went crashing inside.

"Obsidian, wait!" Trinity called out. While she seized the hem of Obsidian's leather coat with one hand, her other hand was drawn away from her ear just as Tank was frantically trying to tell her about the sabotaged EMP. She missed the whole message as she tumbled into the house right behind Obsidian. Neo instinctively followed Trinity, and after exchanging a brief glance, Dagger and Node jumped in after him, but were not fast enough. As they reached the doorway, the house became nothing but openly exposed code, and flickered out of existence. The remaining crewmembers landed in soft turf with a 'thud'.

"It's gone" Node whispered. Despite the fact that he knew it was programmed to do that, he still had to see it to believe it.  
Dagger slumped on the ground in defeat and fished for her cell phone in her pocket. She dialed Tank and started to talk.

"Yeait's gonejust me an' Nodeokay, we're going," she answered to Tank in monotone. After hanging up, she slowly rose from her 'seat' in the dirt and reached out for Node's hand.

"They're preparing an exit for us in the nearest town. He says we have to get out of here before any Agents show up," she told him. He nodded wordlessly and joined her as she headed in the direction of the town.

* * *

"The others are still inside that thing," Tank finished, telling Morpheus everything he could deduce from his conversations with Trinity and Dagger, as well as what he could interpret from the sensors scanning the Matrix. Morpheus closed his eyes and frowned. There was nothing he could do until they knew more, until he and Tank knew where they were now. The feeling of helplessness threatened to devour him from the inside.

"We need to find that house again," he told Tank.

"I know."

"Let's get to work."


	8. Turn Around

Act 7: Turn Around

Disclaimer: The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

* * *

"God damn it all to hell! It just keeps moving!" Tank yelled, kicking the shelves that held his keyboards and image translators. Morpheus looked up from behind the monitors and frowned at his companion.

"No luck I assume?" he questioned. Tank shook his head.

"This thing moves too fast. Every time I think I'm almost done pinning its location, it suddenly moves to another spot! It wasn't doing this before!" Tank explained angrily. He gritted his teeth, leaned towards the screens in front of him as far as he safely could, and prepared for another chase.

Morpheus paced the main deck while Tank worked. So far, the only positive sign that things had not gone completely to hell was that everyone's vital signs appeared normal. Stressed, but physically fine.

He figured that he be thankful for such small miracles, and even more thankful that he was not caught in the middle of this crazy mission, but in reality he wanted nothing more than to be in there. His place was fighting alongside Neo and Trinity, not lurking in the ship, waiting for something to happen.

And for the tenth time, Tank lost track of the elusive house.

Morpheus finally joined the operator behind the chair and read the code that Tank was searching. He too could spot the house appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, but he doubted that any search program could possibly catch it before it moved again, even the ones Tank had beefed up.

"What we need is a new algorithm. A faster, more specific one," Morpheus said.

"You got that right. But specific ones are complicated. We'd need to make up a whole new search parameter protocol. Who could program one like that in such a short time?" Tank asked. They both got the answer at the same time.

"00!"

* * *

"Tank? Are you there? Tank!" Trinity exclaimed. Static was the only thing that answered her.

"Shit. It's being jammed."

"That's not the only thing that's changed," Neo pointed out, "I think the security protocols have been activated."

Trinity nodded in agreement and took in the changes for herself as she put her phone away. Neo certainly exaggerating. It looked like every single light in the house was now on. There wasn't a speck of dust anywhere like before, and the furniture was no longer covered. Classical music echoed from one of the rooms, filling the house with its joyful melody. From behind closed doors, Trinity could hear people laughing, talking, and drinking.

"How many are there?" she asked Neo, who had his eyes closed and was concentrating.

"Not sure…at least forty," he answered after a few seconds. His brow creased in frustration as he continued to read the Matrix.

"I can't tell which one is Obsidian, or Data for that matter," he finally told her.

"Then I guess we have to do this the old fashioned way."

Together, Neo and Trinity began to stalk the empty corridors in search of the Genesis crew. They made their way slowly towards the basement. It was the only place they could think that Obsidian would be going. Unfortunately, going there was proving to be a lot harder than before. The people were _everywhere_ – in almost every room, traversing most of the hallways, and leaving little room for Trinity and Neo to sneak around in.

They paused briefly in an empty powder room to regroup, locking the door behind them. Neo once again put his skills to use and searched the Matrix for any information that could be helpful while Trinity watched the door.

"The way to the basement is almost clear. There's one person off in one of the adjacent rooms on their own," Neo told her.

"Might be Obsidian. Either way, we have to move," she insisted, approaching the door. They slipped out of the room unnoticed and walked along an empty corridor.

"Neo?"

"Yea?"

"How did you know?" Trinity asked, keeping her voice level down. Neo already knew what she meant. She was talking about Data.

"Because the centerpoint was not where he said it was."

"That's it?" she pried, unconvinced.

Neo didn't answer until they had rounded another corner and evaded another group of people. He managed to catch a glimpse of their clothing and couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. As if to compliment the house's Victorian ambiance, they were wearing finely pressed tuxedos and formal dresses. _This place is something out of the Sound of Music,_ he thought to himself.

After checking behind him to ensure that they were not being followed, he looked at Trinity and shrugged nervously in response to her question.

"I can't explain how I knew," he confessed in a whisper, "I just _knew_."

Before Trinity could respond, the sound of footfalls forced them to detour yet again into an adjacent room. They remained concealed behind the wooden door as the individual walked by. The black leather and cursing coming from the person's mouth gave away who it was.

Trinity flipped around the door, seized Obsidian with one hand, pointed her gun at her temple with the other, and dragged her into the room in one fluid motion.

"Are you insane?" Trinity demanded as she lowered her weapon, but did not release Obsidian completely.

"We're never going to get another chance to do this!" Obsidian hissed back arrogantly. She tried to squirm out of Trinity's hold, but to no avail.

"Right. And going through this building with its security on maximum makes it that much easier," Trinity snapped back, her eyes ablaze with anger.

"That's a difference of opinion," her captive responded haughtily.

Trinity considered simply punching Obsidian to get her point across, but quickly thought better of it. Instead, she removed Obsidian's weapon and stuck it into her own holster.

"Now who's insane?" Obsidian protested. At this point, she had either forgotten or given up on being quiet, and was nearly screaming at her two companions.

"I don't trust you, and I do not intend to return your gun until I'm convinced of where your loyalties lie," Trinity told her. Her expression was neutral, but Neo could tell that she was angrier now than he had ever seen her.

The argument would have probably continued for a good while, but the sound of more footsteps coming down the hallway reminded the three people of their immediate danger.

"We have to move _now_," Neo said firmly. Obsidian moved towards the doorway, but stopped when Neo shook his head. "The whole hallway's full," he told her.

"So what do we do? I am not leaving without Data," Obsidian repeated.

Neo's eyes darted across the room, and eventually settled on the wall that separated them from a clear route to the basement.

"Walk through, turn right, then left, and then straight," he instructed the two women. Trinity understood what he meant immediately and nodded, but Obsidian just gawked at him, wondering what he meant.

He didn't explain what he meant. Neo busied himself with the wall in front of him. He pressed one of his hands firmly on the surface, closed his eyes, and focused. A few seconds later, the wall's coding visibly changed with a flash of green, and Trinity ran right through it without a second thought. At Neo's urging, Obsidian tentatively stepped through before breaking into an all-out sprint, and Neo brought up the rear, closing up the wall behind him. Within seconds, they had made it to the basement stairwell, and slammed the door shut.

"I hope no one noticed that," Neo remarked. He was still worried about whether or not they had been detected. Had he tripped any alarms with his code manipulations? He hadn't had time to check.

"How…the hell…did you…did you do that?" Obsidian asked breathlessly. The sudden sprint at speeds greater than a human could actually run had left her lungs begging for oxygen.

"How do you think?" Trinity asked cryptically. Obsidian scowled at her hint.

"There is no One. I'll never believe in that," she snapped, "you learned to do that somehow. How?"

"It doesn't matter," Neo answered.

Trinity used their safe heaven to try and reach the Nebuchadnezzar again. She handed her gun to Neo to hold, and dialed.

"Come on…" she muttered, watching the phone's status screen. Finally, it said 'CONNECTED', and the phone began to ring.

* * *

"I've got them!" Tank cheered, "one of them is trying to call us, and it made all the difference!"

That was all Morpheus needed to hear to make him feel a little better. "Good work," he told Tank and 00, "now let's get them out of there."

Smiling, Tank turned his attention back to the phone call. "Operator?" he asked nervously.

* * *

"Tank?" Trinity asked. Although she had managed to get a hold of the ship, the connection was bad and full of static.

"Yes. Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine," Trinity assured him, "what about Dagger and Node?"

"They're making their way to an exit," Tank told her, "but there's something more important that I have to tell you!"

Trinity raised her hand to get the attention of Obsidian and Neo before they went down the stairs and motioned for them to come back. "What?" she prompted.

"I looked at the Genesis' EMP…someone sabotaged it Trinity," Tank told her. Trinity tensed.

"Who?"

"There's no way to tell. Morpheus says that you and Neo'll have to trust your instincts…"

As Tank continued to explain the situation, Neo watched as Trinity's expression went from its usual serene self to something colder. Her hand went for her weapon at her waist, and he frowned. Whatever news Tank had, it wasn't good.

"…I'd better go now, Trin. They might track this line if I stay any longer. You have to get out of there, you hear me?" Tank finished. Trinity closed her eyes, focusing her thought on what she had to do, and nodded.

"Yes. See you soon," she answered, hanging up the phone without even looking at it. After putting it away, she gratefully accepted her other gun from Neo and checked it.

"What did he say?" Obsidian demanded, angry that she was not being told anything. Trinity glared at the woman as she made sure that both her guns were loaded and ready.

"Your EMP was sabotaged. That's why your ship was destroyed. One of your crew was…or is a traitor," she replied.

"That's a lie!" Obsidian insisted. Trinity didn't even blink.

"Then you're the traitor. Either way, you're not getting your gun back. We're leaving."

"How dare you say that about my crew! You have no right!" Obsidian protested. When neither Neo nor Trinity responded, she growled and ran down the stairs.

"Obsidian! Don't be stupid!" Neo called out.

"I am _not_ leaving my last crewman down here to die!"

* * *

"Ugh…somebody get this thing out of my head!" Dagger insisted. She was back on the Neb and desperately desired to get the plug out of her skull. In a futile attempt to remove it herself, she swung her arms backwards and reached with all her might, but did nothing more than pull a muscle.

"Relax. It's harder to remove the plug when you are tense," Morpheus chided her. He grasped the plug and gently removed it, leaving Dagger to get herself out of the chair. Once she had freed herself, she set about to checking the status of everyone else who was still plugged in.

"Has there been any word from them?" she questioned Tank while she worked.

"We managed to locate the house with one off 00's algorithms, and we called them. But they're not in the safe zone yet," Tank answered uneasily.

"00? So he did it again. Huh."

Tank shot Dagger a warning look to remind her not to say anything at her comment. She rolled her eyes and pretended to be busy checking Data's vitals, although she was more interested in his contraption on the floor beside him.

"Everyone's so on edge lately…except you," she said to the unconscious man as she eventually looked at his monitor, "given where you are, you're a cool customer."

* * *

Obsidian burst through the basement door and whirled around in circles searching for her crewmate. She found him exactly where she had left him, in his dark corner. He was squatting before the bomb, facing the wall. She couldn't help feeling that in this light he looked tired.

She approached him slowly, and did her best to render her voice soft and understanding. "Data," she said, "this isn't going to work. I never thought I'd say this, but we need to regroup."

"It's too late for that now," he replied quietly, standing up. He reached out with one hand and placed it against the wall, as if he could no longer support his own weight. Obsidian, however, refused to let give in.

"Data, come on," she tried again, "we weren't fast enough the first time around, and if we don't leave now, we all might be killed…like before."

"No. Everyone is dead because you decided to take them on a suicide mission without Zion's approval," Data replied in a neutral tone, as if he was repeating the day's weather report.

Hesitantly, Obsidian placed her hand on his shoulder in an attempt to calm her crewmate. So much of her attention was focused on Data at this point that she never even noticed the glimmer the wall was giving off, as green code began to descend clearly and touch Data's hand. The code spread like wildfire up his arm.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he said finally. Obsidian found herself stepping back cautiously as he spoke. His voice was changing. And she didn't like the sound of it one bit.

* * *

"What the hell? Someone come look at this!" Dagger hollered frantically. Her gaze was completely fixed on Data's vital signs, particularly on his brain patterns. She watched in horror and curiosity as their tempo and frequency changed in an almost random fashion until settling on something that was very distinct from what they had been before.

Morpheus joined the medic as soon as she had pleaded for someone to come and tried to make sense of it. "This couldn't have been caused by some kind of interrogation serum. It works too fast," he observed. The new pattern was unfamiliar to him. It wasn't a cracked mind, but it certainly did not resemble what it had been before.

"What's going on in there?" he whispered to himself, wishing for the thousandth time that he could be in there with Neo and Trinity. But with the security on maximum, there was no way for him to hack in…

* * *

By the time Trinity and Neo had made it into the basement in pursuit of Obsidian, they found themselves with facing one horrified ship captain and one unreadable shipmate. Without hesitation, the two pointed their guns directly at the back of Data's head, their fingers dangerously close to pulling the trigger.

"You're the traitor," Neo uttered. He let his eyes take in the Matrix code that made up the man, and realized something else. He knew that pattern, and it wasn't human.

"You're an Agent."

The Agent laughed, and for the first time Neo had no trouble identifying which Agent it was. But he still couldn't believe it.

"An Agent, yes, but I have betrayed no one…Mr. Anderson," Agent Smith answered, enjoying the moment.

In an instant, Obsidian jumped back defensively, but Smith caught her by the arm, preventing her from getting to the other end of the room. He turned around to face the three, greeting them with a smug expression on his face.

His clothing had not changed, and neither had his hair, but his face, voice, and movements left no question to his identity. But most of all, Neo realized that his eyes had been the giveaway all along. Even though Data's hadn't even been exactly the same colour, there was something about the way they had looked in the Matrix as well as the real world that had told Neo the truth.

He wanted nothing more than to charge at the Agent guns blazing, but he knew it was not an option. Smith was using Obsidian as a shield. Even worse, something tickled the back of his mind, warning him that people were approaching.

"You'd better start running," Smith mocked, smiling again. Trinity's eyes narrowed in anger.

"Go," Neo said quietly.

"What?" Trinity asked incredulously.

"Go," he repeated.

The words were like a green light at a racing competition. Everyone moved at once. Trinity bolted for the door behind her, kicking it out of her way as she went. Smith had anticipated this and went for his gun, which was still sitting in its holster by his waist.

Neo moved to counter Smith and give both Trinity and Obsidian the cover they needed to escape the room. He tossed his own gun into the air and tackled Smith with both hands, narrowly missing Obsidian's body. She took advantage of the distraction, squirmed out of Smith's grasp, and sprinted for the door right behind Trinity, catching Neo's gun before it hit the ground as she went.

Neo slammed Smith into the nearest wall with all his might, creating a large hole and sending plaster everywhere. While the Agent tried to recover from the hit, Neo kicked him in the head with a roundhouse kick. As his foot landed on the ground again, he pivoted and started to follow the two women out. Neo knew that it wouldn't be enough to kill Smith, but he didn't have time for that right now. Getting out alive was more important.

He joined Trinity and Obsidian at the top of the staircase in a fraction of a second, and Obsidian opened the door as soon as he arrived, rushing to the right once it was out of the way. She was searching for a window, a damaged wall, anything that they could break through to get to the other side.

As they had all expected, people surrounded the area around the basement door. Two transformed into Agents instantaneously, and Obsidian left them for Neo and Trinity to deal with.

Within seconds, the two had made short work of the Agents. After months of practice, Trinity was almost as bold as Neo when it came to confronting them. She let one of the Agents seize her wrist before shooting him the stomach and shoving him aside at an inhuman speed. She didn't catch what Neo was doing, but she heard the buzz of the Agent escaping a dead host right before she pulled the trigger on her opponent.

In the time it took for Neo and Trinity to destroy the first set of Agents, Obsidian had located a window large enough to get through. She began shooting at it without a second thought, but even after she had emptied her entire clip on it, the window had not shattered. The bullets had merely become embedded in the glass.

"They've changed the windows!" she yelled to the others, who were finishing off the second round of Agents.

"Then we go for the front door!" Trinity shouted back while she used the butts of her guns to shove an Agent into Neo's direction. She then tossed Obsidian's own gun back to her to ensure that she wasn't unarmed.

Obsidian nodded and began to make a run for the front door, but was quickly blocked by a group of people. One of them became an Agent, and yet another one appeared several paces behind Neo and Trinity.

In hopes of limiting how many more times the Agents could come back, Trinity began shooting as many of the remaining people as possible before the approaching sentinel got too close for comfort. Obsidian decided to try and shoot the Agent facing her, and managed to nick him in the shoulder. With no more bullets left, she dived past it, leaving Neo to deliver the finishing blow. Another loud crash caused her to turn around briefly to check on Trinity's progress, and she couldn't help but smile as she watched the woman defeat another of the programs. It was exhilarating.

All the while, they inched their way closer and closer to the way out, and Smith made his way closer and closer to them, emerging from the basement as they disappeared behind a corner.

They were just a few meters away from the exit when one more obstacle presented itself. What people were left (there was no more than a dozen or so, Neo estimated) were now trying to form a physical barrier between them and the door. All three fugitives froze and looked at each other.

"Go!" Neo repeated harshly. Obsidian complied, and charged at the group of people with all the energy she could muster. Her speed was enough to propel through most of the people, and she fought of the rest before grabbing the doorknob and twisting it with all her might. It didn't budge.

When Neo saw that Obsidian couldn't wrench the door open, he glanced at Trinity as a way of asking for cover, and closed his eyes, pinning down the code that was keeping the door closed. He started to push at it with his mind, and was more than surprised when it resisted his command. But it only made him try harder. While he whittled away at the code, the doorknob began to twist.

Agent Smith appeared at behind the trio while Neo and Obsidian were occupied with forcing the door open. Trinity kept track of him while she fought off anyone who got too close to the others, but started to worry when he got close enough to get a clear shot at Neo. They were almost out…she could see a faint crack between the wall and the door…

And then the door flew open as it ceased to resist Neo's influence. Neo toppled over at the sudden release. It was like he had been accelerating his car to maximum while the parking brake was on, and then someone had released it. He hadn't been expecting it.

Trinity watched Obsidian get pulled out once the space was large enough to squeeze through. She looked back at Smith, who had now been joined by the other two Agents (again). He was aiming his gun directly at Neo's head, and Neo was still recovering from his fight with the door. Trinity wasn't even sure if he had noticed Smith's presence yet. All she knew was that she was not about to let the Agent pull that trigger.

She kicked the gun out of his hand with all her might and pushed the Agent back with a second jab. Then, she seized Neo's waist, got him to his feet and pushed him out of the house. He tumbled into a ton of sand, and realized that the house must have hidden itself in the middle of a desert. Neo regained his balance upon his exit and whirled around in time to see Trinity rushing out behind him.

She was inches from the doorframe when a set of hands grabbed her and yanked her back, causing her to fall backwards.

And then the door slammed shut, and the house disappeared again, with Trinity still inside, leaving Neo and Obsidian standing alone in an endless landscape of sand.

* * *

Morpheus' patience finally met its end as he watched the vital signs of the group go haywire, a telltale sign that they were in the middle of a fight. And then…Trinity's just died down, as if in defeat. He had had enough. He needed to know what was going on in there, and he had to help in any way he could.

"I'm going in," he announced bluntly.

Tank intended to point out everything that was wrong with the idea, starting with the fact that he had no clue where to load Morpheus, but stopped before the words came to his mouth. Someone from inside the Matrix was calling them.

"Hang on Morpheus, I've got something," he called to the captain, who walked over to him in order to listen in on the conversation.

Tank tapped a few commands on his keyboard in order to run a trace on the call and answered it. "Operator."

"We're in trouble!" a voice yelled through the receiver. Tank's hands flew across the keyboard while he listened to the man on the other line, searching for an exit in his vicinity. He lifted his headgear, microphone and all, off of his head and held it between his and Morpheus' ears while the captain took over the controls.

"Hang on," Tank said in an attempt to calm him down, "where are you? Is everyone okay?"

"I feel okay…but only Trinity's with me. I don't know where Neo and Obsidian are."

"Okay. You're in a suburb in New York State. I'm making a temporary exit for you a kilometer east of you in a red house."

"Thank you Tank. See you soon."

Tank put the headset back on after Data hung up, and gave Morpheus a questioning look. "Is it just me, or was that really weird?" he asked.

Morpheus nodded in agreement. Something was wrong. Trinity should have been the one to call them…and why was she not with Neo?

"Something is missing here," he finally concluded, "and I think I know what it is." He caught Dagger's attention and beckoned to her.

"Shit," Tank murmured, realizing what Morpheus meant.

Dagger strode up to the captain and raised her eyebrows at their contemplative faces. "What is it?" she asked.

"Get the knives," the elder man told her. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"What? Why?" she demanded.

"We may need weapons."

Dagger didn't understand completely what he meant, but gave in and jogged over to the medical bay to retrieve the surgical knives.

* * *

Back in the Matrix, Neo and Obsidian were sailing through the air, using Neo's ability to fly to get back to civilization faster. Obsidian busied herself with trying to get her cell phone working. She dialed the Neb's number three times, and each time the phone failed to connect.

"What do you mean, 'out of range'?' she hissed at her phone, shaking it.

"It's still a cell phone," Neo reminded her, "and it still needs a network to connect to. Something tells me not too many people have phones out here."

"Looks like it…Damn," she swore in response, "Can't you boost it or something?"

"Oh. So now you think I'm the One?" Neo challenged, raising an eyebrow.

"I didn't say that. But I'm not just going to ignore the fact that you probably can," she scoffed.

"Not while I'm doing this. I can't fly and use the phone at the same time."

He descended as quickly as he could and waited for Obsidian to give him the phone. She hesitated, and he gave her an annoyed look.

"We need to contact the ship now, not later," Neo insisted. Reluctantly, she handed the phone over. Neo heard her mutter something about Zion, but he didn't catch it. Whatever it was, it could wait.

He dialed the Neb's number, and as the message on the phone's screen said 'CONNECTING', he stared intently at the device, forcing its signals to go farther and farther. A satisfied smile appeared on his face as the phone gave in and connected to the network.

"Operator," Morpheus said, his voice covered with static, though not as bad as it had been in the house.

"Whatever you do, do _not_ unplug Data. He's an Agent!" Neo told him harshly.

"What?" Morpheus asked, "Neo, did you just-"

"Yes! I don't know how yet, just don't unplug him!"

"All right. What happened? All of your vitals went crazy!"

"He got her. Is she okay?" Neo demanded.

"So far." Morpheus' replied, not bothering to hide his concern or pessimism. Neo heard him cover the microphone of the headset and put the crew on casualty and sentinel alert. He then returned his attention back to Neo.

"Neo, your exit is west from where you are right now. A rest stop with a dry well. There's a satellite phone installed there. Get there as fast as you can."

"No way," Neo retorted, "tell me where she is. I'm not leaving without her."

"We don't know where she is Neo," Morpheus insisted, "we have to locate the house again. It will be easier to plug you directly into it like we did before than for you to access from there."

"…All right," Neo answered reluctantly. He hung up the phone and shut it down without a word, and returned it to Obsidian, who jammed it back into her pocket and wrapped her arms around Neo again so he could start flying again.

With no planes or people whatsoever in the vicinity to avoid, he flew freely towards their destination, absorbed in his thought. He was focused on only two things: getting to the exit as fast as possible, and Trinity.

While he couldn't alter two parts of the Matrix at once (yet, he assured himself), he could freely scan its code with little hindrance to his ability to fly. He checked to make sure that there was nothing in the area that could detect them, that they were indeed heading in the right direction, and that Trinity was okay. He tried to locate her in the mass of swirling green, but couldn't pin her any more than Tank could pin down the house.

But still…he had a sense of her. He knew her better than anyone else he had ever known, and even in the complex world of the Matrix, filled with over six billion minds, he was sure he could sense her somewhere. She was fine for the moment, and that was enough for him.

Obsidian seemed to pick up on the subject of his reverie, and poked him to get his attention. "Do you think she's okay?" she asked carefully.

"Of course she is," Neo answered.

He knew he was right.


	9. Voices of Enigma

Act 8: Voices of Enigma

Disclaimer:The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

* * *

Dagger grumbled to herself as she carried spare wiring from one side of the room to the other.

"This is more than I certainly asked for…I told them we should've just left, but no…"

She dropped the parts in back of Trinity's chair, and circled it so that she could check up on her vital signs.

"So far she's doing fine. Her life signs are stable," she told the people below her.

"Good. Let's make sure they stay that way," Tank answered. He wiped away the grime staining his face with his arm and continued to accept parts from 00, who was picking at the pile Dagger had presented them.

Together, the two were doing the only other thing that they could think of to help the others. After giving the apparatus a quick examination, Tank had removed Data's prototype from his body and was now trying to attach it to Trinity's network of wires. That way, if anything went wrong and they lost power, they could still move her safely.

It was proving to be a challenge for the mechanic. He had to connect it to her while she was plugged in, and as far as he could tell, it hadn't been designed for that. Right now, Tank was only certain about one thing about the device. It was a great idea, but still a machine.

He spliced two more wires together and then snapped them into place. "That should do it," he told 00.

They stood up, and, while praying that it would actually work, Tank turned the jack-in back on. It came to life and connected to Trinity's plug with no sign of a problem. Dagger, who had been holding her breath, sighed in relief.

"It's working Morpheus," Tank reported to the captain, who was seated before the monitors, waiting.

"Good. Because this is all about to end any minute now. Neo and Obsidian are coming out," he answered.

Obsidian woke up first, and the minute she was free from the chair, sat up and buried her face in her hands.

"You made it," Dagger said in a futile attempt to cheer the woman up before tending to Neo's station. Obsidian never answered her. Seconds later, Neo's eyes snapped open, fully alert.

"Trinity?" he asked while the metal plug was being removed from his neck. He struggled to get out of the restraints as quickly as possible and crossed the distance between his chair and hers within seconds.

"She's okay…I think. We haven't heard from her," Dagger answered, shrugging her shoulders.

The conversation was abruptly broken by the sound of the proximity alarms going off. Inwardly, Neo groaned. _I should have known. They always seem to come at times like this._

"Morpheus, company's coming!" Node notified them over the intercom. 

"How many?" Morpheus asked.

"Five. We have about ten minutes before they see us."

"Ten minutes? That's it? Shit," Obsidian remarked. In seconds, she had covered the distance between her and Morpheus' consoles, reaching for the EMP in order to charge it. He grabbed her hand at once, pushing it aside and shaking his head. Obsidian tried to change his mind in a glaring contest, but didn't succeed in looking anything more than tired. Annoyed, she stalked off and decided to settle for keeping an eye on Data's prone body, leaving Morpheus alone.

Tank, who was still wearing the headset, froze in mid-step as he made his way towards Morpheus from the chairs.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a call," he announced before bounding over to where Morpheus was sitting in order to run a trace on it. Neo glanced at Trinity's body and squeezed her hand. _I could hear you when I was in there,_ he thought, _so I know you can hear me. That better be you calling._

Several seconds passed while Tank listened to the person on the other line. Based on his expression, it appeared as though he was being asked an odd question. His eyes scanned the room and focused on Neo.

"It's for you Neo," Tank told him cautiously as he gave the headset to him.

Confused, Neo gave Tank a funny look before accepting the headset and putting it on. He glanced at the falling code on the monitors in front of them, but they didn't appear to be focused on the caller.

"Hello?" he asked tentatively.

"Hi. It's me," a female voice answered sweetly. Neo felt a shiver pass over him as he understood her meaning. It wasn't Trinity; the woman's voice was too sweet, too sugar-coated. It was _her._

Shortly after he had killed Smith, Neo had felt her inside the Matrix for the first time. Somehow, he had known who she was, and had called her. He didn't know anything about her, except for the fact that she was not on their side. She was with the machines.

"What do you want?" Neo asked severely. His finger moved to the button on the side of the headphones that ended phone calls, grazing it slightly. Someone knew the Neb's number. They were probably using it to track them. He had to end the call quickly.

"You ruin all my fun," she complained, "but fine. I'll make this short and sweet. I'm in charge. I'm tired of you creatures messing around with my power source, especially you."

Neo couldn't help but chuckle. "I did warn you that I was going to do something," he reminded her, "and I don't intend to stop now because you asked me nicely. I will destroy your dream world."

"And her along with it?" the voice replied. From the sound of it, she was savoring every word of the sentence. She let the words sink into Neo's brain before releasing the fit of laughter that she had been keeping in.

Neo felt like he was back in his nightmare again, sinking into a deep body of water. All of the pieces of the puzzle were finally making sense. The laughter he had heard was hers, this creature that was taunting him. She had somehow restored the Agent Smith. She was the one who had ordered the strike against the Genesis, the one who had somehow managed to help Smith infiltrate Data's mind…all for the purpose of catching Trinity in her web and never letting her out. To stop him from destroying the Matrix. He refused to accept it. It was too perfect.

"You can't do it, can you?" she taunted, breaking into Neo's moment of clarity as if knew exactly what he was thinking.

"She'll get out," Neo responded, more to remind himself of that truth than her. He didn't doubt that. Trinity was probably breaking out of…whatever she was being held in as they spoke. She just needed some time.

'She' didn't seem so disturbed by Neo's assertion, though. "Maybe," she said casually, "I intend to keep her from doing that for as long as possible. In any case, there are sentinels converging on this position as we speak. I've taken enough of your time, and you have only a few minutes to get her out. Or, you could just let her die. The ball's in your court now, Neo. Where we go from _here_, is up to you."

The line went dead.

"Neo?" Morpheus questioned cautiously.

"Shit," Neo mumbled.

"What? Who was that?" Tank asked.

In as few words as possible, Neo summarized the conversation he had just had. Morpheus recalled Neo's strange claim that he could sense someone in the Matrix, and cursed himself silently for not thinking of it sooner. It felt like that incident had been a lifetime ago.

"That's impossible," Dagger stuttered, "she planned everything out?"

"Yea? Well the bitch forgot something," Obsidian called out. Neo looked up just in time to see her rip out Data's plug, killing him. His body spasmed in shock for a moment before collapsing. Obsidian dropped the plug without a second thought and stalked away.

Over the intercom, Node's voice called out yet again, reminding them that the Squiddies were only a few minutes away.

"Should we high-tail it out of here?" he asked. Morpheus turned to face Tank.

"Can the jack-in keep her connected?"

Tank thought about it for a minute before nodding. "We'll have to stay in broadcast range for it to keep working."

"All right. Node, get us out of here, but keep us at broadcast depth for as long as you can," Morpheus ordered.

Neo felt the engines start up the moment Morpheus had issued his order and retreated out of the core. His mind was going a mile a minute, but he didn't want to think about anything. So he opted for the next best thing, and that was to at least eat something. Trinity would kill him if he didn't.

He slipped into the mess hall and left the door open as he went to get a plate and spoon. He wasn't alone in the room; apparently, this was where Obsidian had retreated to, and 00 and was there as well, sipping a cup of water. Neo said nothing while he got some food, and quietly sat down and tried to eat. Dagger joined them a few seconds after Neo's arrival, but didn't get any food, wanting only a place to sit down.

Obsidian broke the silence after several minutes. "I don't understand it," she said harshly.

"What?" Neo asked.

"Data. How…how did that thing get into him? How long had it been there? Why didn't I notice? Why was I so blind!" she elaborated, getting more and more upset with every passing second.

00 set down his cup and looked at Obsidian. "Maybe they've been trying to do that for a while," he offered quietly, "maybe they were practicing. Maybe there are others…"

"That's not an assuring thought, kid."

00 looked away, but continued, his voice wavering as he went along.

"But maybe…maybe she practiced on ones who didn't want it. Maybe they got angry, and…and now they want to help."

"Machines turning against one another?" Obsidian sneered, "I wish."

00 gave up, and sighed. "I hate them," he managed to say.

Neo returned his attention to his less-than-appealing meal and shoveled some into his mouth. Obsidian just rested her head on the table and stared at the ceiling. But Dagger didn't dismiss what 00 said as quickly. She turned it over in her head once, then twice, and a third time before coming to any conclusions. When she did, she gasped, staring at 00 in shock.

"That's it. That's who you are…" she said to him.

"He's who? Obsidian asked irritably, as if she just wanted to shut Dagger up before she started to talk incessantly.

"He's an AI…inside a human body! He was tested on! And that's why he's so good at hacking the Matrix!"

Obsidian and Neo both glanced at the girl briefly before looking at 00, who immediately lowered his gaze to the floor.

"I…I'm no one. That's why my name is 00. I just want to get back at them for ruining my life," he explained, neither denying nor accepting Dagger's conclusion. Dagger took it as a 'yes' and smiling triumphantly.

Obsidian closed her eyes and balled her hands into tight fists. For a minute or two, it appeared as id she was trying to meditate but wasn't succeeding. Eventually, she rose from her seat and stared down at the others condescendingly.

"You're just a brainless kid," she told Dagger before turning to Neo, "and I don't care if the Oracle herself said that you're the One. Both of you need to wake up."

She strode to the door and seized the handle. Before twisting it and leaving, she glanced back at 00 and added, "And the only good machine is a dead machine," before forcing it open and slamming it behind her.

Neo started to wonder the moment Obsidian left. He knew that there were now plenty of important issues to clear up – how the Voice had infiltrated the Genesis, how the Agent had become Data, and whether or not 00 really was an artificial intelligence as Dagger hypothesized. But he couldn't think about those things; all of it felt like minor details. His brain kept passing over them in order to focus on Trinity. She was stuck in the Matrix, could be killed at any time, the jack-in could break…

…or the Matrix would fall, as planned, before they could find her and help her escape. Neo shuddered at the possibility of having to choose. That was an impossible choice. He couldn't decide alone; he needed some guidance.

"Neo?" somebody asked. Neo snapped out of his meditative state and met Morpheus' concerned face. Neo realized that he must have slipped in when he had not been paying attention.

__

Enough thinking. I need to do something. There is someone who can answer my questions. Why don't I go see her?

"Morpheus, I need to see the Oracle," Neo told him.

* * *

He went in with only Morpheus. If Neo had had his way, he would have hone alone, but his mentor refused completely to let him. Nobody else joined them on the expedition back into the Matrix.

They had made the trip quickly and silently, something Neo was happy for, preferring to be lost in his thoughts than to discuss his feelings with Morpheus. Before he knew it, he was in the elevator again, as if it was still the first time and he had been daydreaming since that time. It didn't feel any different.

At the door, Morpheus waited for Neo to open it. Neo reached out for the handle and grasped it, half-expecting someone to open it from the inside at any second. When it didn't happen, he tried the door.

It was locked.

He looked to Morpheus for some kind of explanation, but found that his companion was just as surprised as he was.

"That's never happened before, has it?" Neo asked, his hopes falling. Even if it had, it was not a good sign in his opinion. Morpheus confirmed his fears with a slight nod before suggesting that they try to knock. Seeing nothing else to try, Neo rapped his knuckles against the door a few times.

This time the door opened a bit, and Neo saw the same woman that had let him in the last time peeking through the crack between the door and the frame.

"Neo, how nice," she said calmly, although she was clearly perplexed by his presence, "what brings you here?"

"We came to speak with the Oracle," Morpheus explained as he stepped into view so that the priestess could see him.

This only seemed to confuse her more. "I'm afraid we weren't expecting you…" she answered.

From within the apartment, a older woman's voice called out towards the doorway.

"It's all right dear," the Oracle said, "I had a feeling that they might stop by."

"Oh…of course. Please come in," the priestess said. She opened the door all the way and beckoned to Morpheus and Neo to come inside.

The apartment hadn't changed in the slightest since he had last been there, Neo could hear the character proclaim 'I am not an entity. I am a time…' onscreen from the hall and made it into the room just as the character exploded into a mass of green light and code. Talk about irony.

Upon their arrival, the Oracle reached for the remote control and switched off the set. "Why don't you kids go play in the next room for a bit? I think that's enough TV for one day, don't you?" she asked the children lightly. They seemed to like the idea and were quickly on their way out of the room with two of the priestesses in tow to keep an eye on them. The Oracle smiled lovingly at them as they left, and then gave her visitors an apologetic look.

"I truly am sorry for not getting the door. It must have slipped my mind," she said as she rose from her seat, "now what can I do for you boys? Surely you didn't come all this way for some cookies."

"I need to know about Trinity," Neo told her bluntly.

"Oh?" the Oracle asked, feigning surprise, "what part?"

"Where is she?" Morpheus implored.

The Oracle regarded Morpheus seriously for a moment before assuming a more grave expression. "You know I can't give you a straight answer for that Morpheus. It's against the rules. Why are you putting yourself through that?"

"Because right now, I really don't care about the rules," he replied. The woman nodded in agreement.

"That's right. You both care about her. Especially you, Neo. _She_ knows that too, and she'll use it to her advantage for as long as she can. You know who I'm talking about. I know you can feel her too."

"But why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell us about _her_? Why didn't you warn Trinity that this would happen to her?" Neo demanded.

"I think what you really want to ask me is 'why did this have to happen to Trinity?' Am I right?" the Oracle calmly asked. Neo sighed and nodded.

"Yea," he mumbled.

"Why did you fall in love with her to begin with?"

Her question made Neo laugh nervously. "I can't believe you're asking me that," he said, "how could I _not_?"

How couldn't he? The question was illogical to him. Trinity was intelligent, strong, beautiful, devoted, and loved him just as much as he loved her. She made him feel complete. He would have been an idiot not to fall for her!

Apparently, this was not enough for the Oracle. "I don't think anybody forced you, did they? And I certainly didn't say anything," she argued.

"You told me that she liked me," Neo pointed out.

"You didn't know who I was talking about. Besides, I never said that you could fall in love with her. You did that on your own, not by some design of fate," she pointed out.

She leaned closer to Neo and added, "it looks like you only have one choice. This world will soon be gone, whether you help to destroy it or not. Can you really endanger that plan just for Trinity? Sacrifice the freedom of humanity to ensure her safety?"

Her speech left both Neo and Morpheus without anything to say.

It didn't appear to bother her, though. "Those are the only two choices fate has for us, and neither one is easy. As cliché as this is going to sound, you're going to have to follow your heart and live with the consequences," she said gravely.

"But don't worry. Everything will turn out all right. We all believe in you two no matter what."

She touched Neo's shoulder with her hand and smiled again. "Why don't I give you boys some brownies for your ride home?"

* * *

Neo sat dejectedly in the passenger seat of the car as he and his mentor drove to their exit. A half-eaten brownie lay on his leg as he stared out the window, thinking about what the Oracle had said.

_I can't choose!_ He told himself, _it's impossible! I will not let the Matrix continue to exist. I can't. We depend on its destruction to win the way…everyone is depending on me, including her. Trinity wants this to end too._

But I need more time! I won't let her die in here! These can't be the only choices. They can't! They can't!

Neo closed his eyes and tried to visualize Trinity's face. He could do it effortlessly. She was engraved in his thought. In his mind, she stared back at him serenely, making him feel at peace.

And then he stopped, and tried to search the Matrix for her. If he could find Trinity…

It was all too similar to seeking her out in his own memory. But he kept trying.

Somewhere in the midst of the green code, he noticed something familiar, that reminded him of her, and he clung to it with his mind, only to have it wrenched away from him like a dream that he couldn't remember.

But it was enough to convince him that she was alive and well, and suddenly everything the Oracle had said made sense. He knew what he was going to do.

_I don't believe in fate...so why should I believe that I have to choose? Why can't I free Trinity and destroy the Matrix? Am I the One, or what?_


	10. Rivers of Belief

Act 9: Rivers of Belief

Disclaimer:The Matrix, its characters, and its sequels are copyright Warner Bros. and are the creation of the Wachowski brothers. Titles of Acts 3 through 10 are snippets from songs by the music group Enigma. I'm just a rabid fan of both that owns nothing.

* * *

In the midst of the bustling dream world, yet another phone call was made. The phone rang three times before someone picked it up. Whoever had dialed began to talk without waiting for an acknowledgment.

"Hello Trinity. I don't know if you can hear this, or if you're even there. Either way, I have to say this, so that you'll know, so that you'll understand.

"We both know what we have to do. There's no way out of it. One way or another, this world is going to be changed, with or without my help. And if they have their way, it would mean that we lose, no matter what.

"But, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that we are capable of anything. All we have to do is believe that we can defy fate."

The voice paused here, and for a few seconds there was no sound at all. He then continued having found the right words.

"I believe we can have this both ways," Neo said, "and I intend to make sure we do. I'll see you soon, and we'll destroy the Matrix together.

"…I love you."

Click.

The End.

* * *

Author's Notes: It's finally done! After nearly two years! I hope that this has managed to keep you entertained (at least until the real deal comes out on May 15).

Right off the bat, I have to give big hugs to: Becky, for beta-reading the last few chapters, Jullian, for listening to my rants as I worked (I'll make it up to you, I promise!) and reading my drafts, and Obssidean and Ricky, for letting me abuse their aliases and inventing characters around them.

And then, I have to bow down to everyone who took the time to give me a review out of the kindness of their hearts. So thank you*takes a deep breath* MTS, Amberile, Christine Bubbles, Iluvmattdoran, Zephyr, Conlan, Centaur, IceWolf17, Scottishlass, jadedragon88, Ivy, PL, WG, faNatic, Daydreamer, chord, Blake, neofan, posh english tart, Multicolored Gypsy, and Morruniel. You people kick ass.  



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